IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT READ THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE ALREADY READ "EYRIE
PRODUCTIONS DESTROYS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE" IN THE SUBTERRANEAN VAULT:

http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Grill/Vault/epdtmu.txt

If you HAVE read EPDTMU, welcome and enjoy.  Notes to follow.

----
	Paige Guthrie was no stranger to bad situations.  She'd been a
student at the Xavier Institute for six years.  Two years before,
she'd followed her brother Sam's lead and graduated to the big
leagues, the Institute's senior team of costumed crimefighters - the
X-Men.  The X-Men spent their lives getting into bad situations, for
the hopeful betterment of the world.
	Sometimes they didn't get back out again.  Paige was
philosophical about that.  She was a practical girl, the daughter of a
West Virginia coal miner, and she knew that eventually everybody's
number came up.  She did everything she could, with all the skill and
power at her disposal, to minimize the chances, and left the rest up
to fate, or Providence, or whatever name you chose to call it by.
	All the same, today was looking like a day with pretty bad
prospects; in all her born days, Paige had never seen a dust-up like
this one.  All hands on deck, as it were.  She'd never seen so many
Sentinels, to say nothing of the heavily armed paramilitary types.
	The X-Men had lost three of their hardest hitters for this
kind of fight a few years back, when Don Griffin had returned and then
vanished again, taking Wolverine and Colossus with him.  The armored
Time Lord's disappearance had left other holes in the roster, too, and
they were all being felt today.  They were short one of their other
A-list players, too, but the absence of Scott "Cyclops" Summers had
nothing to do with Griffin's disappearance.
	On the other hand, they had a few members now that would have
been unthought-of in Griffin's day, and one of them was squarely in
the front lines now, making up for the lack of Piotr Rasputin.  Paige
still wasn't sure exactly what had sparked Cain Marko's change of
heart, but watching him in action now, she was merely glad something
had.  The Juggernaut was their best chance of getting out of this mess
alive.
	It would be a bit silly, she thought, for the X-Men to make
their last stand on this dinky island in the middle of nowhere,
without even knowing who commanded the forces that destroyed them;
but, though no one had gotten killed yet, if things continued as they
were, that might be just what happened.
	And the day had started out so promisingly, too - 
	A flicker of motion in the sky caught Paige's eye, and she
turned her gaze from the chaos of battle to see what had caused it.  A
missile, perhaps, or an aircraft?  Or, God forbid, yet still more
Sentinels arriving?
	No - it was a man, a lone man, and Paige wasn't sure how to
react to the sight of him.  In his time, he'd been on both sides of
conflicts involving the X-Men, and it was anyone's guess what his
presence meant now.
	Paige was right next to Professor Charles Xavier's hoverchair,
part of the Professor's guard, which was a point of pride (though she
half-suspected him of having asked her to stay near him to keep -her-
out of trouble; she was the youngest X-Man, after all).  Now she
turned to him, her face a question, but he wasn't looking at her.  His
patrician face was turned to the sky, watching the new arrival as he
swooped over the raging battle.  He settled to the ground in front of
Xavier, his cloak falling around him.
	"Charles," said Magneto cordially.  He nodded to his old
friend and adversary, then, to Paige's surprise, gave her a polite
inclination of his helmeted head as well.  "Miss Guthrie.  You're
looking well.  You seem to have a bit of a problem, Charles."
	Despite the desperate situation, Xavier smiled thinly.  "It
could be said," he allowed.
	Magneto folded his arms and watched the fight for a bit.  Here
the Juggernaut strode relentlessly forward, dragging soldiers who had
latched onto all four of his limbs; he wouldn't waste the energy to
shake them off until he needed his hands free for something, like
tearing the leg off the next Sentinel he got to.  There Cannonball,
Paige's brother Sam, blasted clean through the chest of a Sentinel,
sending the monstrous machine down with a pillar of smoke and an
electronic scream.  Lightning flashed overhead as a tornado tore
through part of the formation.
	"Hmph," said Magneto after a few moments.  "Magnificent,
aren't they?  You've taught them well, Charles - and my own modest
contributions to their training haven't hurt either," he added wryly.
"All the same, it appears they're in over their heads.  I hope you
won't mind if I lend them a bit of assistance."
	Without waiting for an answer, Magneto took a step forward and
rose back into the air, his cloak rustling softly as he levered
himself away from the Earth by the planet's own magnetic field.  Once
at a higher vantage point, he started working.
	Having been designed with the eventuality of battling mutants
in mind, Sentinels were equipped to handle a wide variety of threats,
and one of the best-known mutant threats was Magneto.  Still, making
them out of materials impervious to the Master of Magnetism's power
would have been too costly, so their construction still incorporated
ferrous metals.  It was a limitation their creators had known and
accepted.
	Now it came back to haunt their creations... but there were so
-many- of them here today that it seemed like for each one Magneto
pulled apart, two more appeared to replace it.
	Once they saw that he wasn't here to attack them, the X-Men
rallied around Magneto.  This was both good and bad, as it turned
out.  The Sentinels knew a few things about him, and one of the things
they knew was the usual effective range of his power - so they stayed
outside that range and lobbed attacks into the circle thus created.
	That forced the X-Men to either fight back with their own
ranged attacks or move, and moving damaged their defensive cohesion.
That didn't matter to some of them - Juggernaut kept on doing what he
did, for instance - but the rest ended up herded into a cluster around
Magneto and Professor X.
	"We've got to break out of this circle or we're going to get
cut to pieces!" Lucas Bishop barked to Xavier.
	Xavier nodded and turned to Magneto, who had let himself back
down to the ground.  The strain of holding the mechanical killers back
was telling on him; his face was stippled with sweat and stiff with
what might have been pain.  Paige, shocked by the thought of human
frailty attaching to Magneto, reminded herself that he wasn't a young
man.  Hadn't she read in the Professor's files about him that he'd
been a boy during World War II?
	"Erik, can you open us an exit route?" asked Professor X.
	Magneto shook his head.  "Not without leaving us open to the
ones at our backs," he replied.  Then his jawline hardened, his eyes
glinting, and he straightened his back with a clear effort.  "But that
won't be necessary.  I'll show these mechanical aberrations what it
means to trifle with Magneto."
	Xavier looked concerned.  "Erik, you don't look well.  Don't
overextend yourself.  Lucas and Cain can keep our backs covered long
enough for - "
	"Enough!" Magneto snapped.  "Don't mother me, Charles.  I'm
not an old woman.  I am the Master of Magnetism!"  The helmeted mutant
levitated again, his hands flung open at his sides.  He closed his
eyes, marshaling all his strength as he prepared to push his area of
influence beyond its normal limits, catch the encircling Sentinels by
surprise, and tear them to pieces.  They would be destroyed before
they could react to the terrible realization that their precious
target data was incorrect.
	Magneto's hands at his sides clenched into fists, every muscle
in his body quivering with effort.  Sentinels around the perimeter
began to twitch and spark as his power rippled out and tore at them - 
	- and then all hell broke loose.
	The ground shook - no, the -world- shook - as a hot, violent
wind that was none of Storm's doing suddenly shrieked across the
embattled island.  The sky abruptly turned to a swirling, nauseating
combination of black and a horrid shade of orange, shot through with
gnarled lightning of the same unnatural color.
	Paige Guthrie's mind turned inside out as some force wrenched
at her on a level just above the threshold of her perception.  The
last thing she heard, over the howling wind and the consternated cries
of her friends and teammates, was Magneto's deep voice bellowing,
"CHAAAARLES - !"
	- and then, with a sickening lurch of pseudomotion, she was
first sucked into a chaos of an order well above her mind's ability to
perceive, then ejected violently from it and into a world of solid
pain.
	Fortunately, her years of experience as an adventurer had
taught her to keep her wits even when they'd just been yanked bodily
out of her head and stuffed back in.  Instantly, Paige took in her new
situation and drew the correct conclusions:
	- That huge blue-white thing is a planet.
	- That blackness is outer space.
	- That awful pain is exposure to hard vacuum.
	- I have ten, maybe twenty seconds to come up with something
really, REALLY good - or I am DEAD.
	OK... no pressure.
	Faster than she could consciously think, Paige's mind put all
that together and came up with the requisite something - or at least
she hoped it did.  It might not work, in fact it probably wouldn't
work, but now wasn't the time to shy away from pushing the envelope.
	With arms and fingers already stiffening, she reached up, took
hold of her long blonde hair, and yanked.  She'd done this countless
times, and she knew the sensations it caused intimately.  It felt
strange, sure, pulling all your skin off would tend to, wouldn't it;
but it normally didn't hurt.
	This time, it hurt.
	A lot.
	As she fell toward the planet, the upper atmosphere just
beginning to slow her fall, the pain inside overwhelmed the pain
outside and she blacked out.  Her last thought - she expected it to be
her last thought ever - was:
	Oh, God... I just made a horrible pun.

			     7 TEMPLE WAY
			NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI
			       7:15 PM
		       FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2407

	Keiichi Morisato, professor of mechanical engineering at the
Nekomi Institute of Technology, stood in his yard with a shovel on his
shoulder and planned his attack.
	For several years now, his wife Belldandy had wanted a koi
pond in the courtyard outside their converted-temple home, but Keiichi
hadn't gotten around to digging it.  It was a project that he expected
would take up a good weekend.
	Well, he'd decided that weekend was this weekend, so now he
stood considering his options.  He'd need to pull up the paving flags,
of course, but before he could do that, he'd have to settle on a size
and shape for the pond.  He could have done that with a plan of the
temple complex, he supposed - he was an engineer and draftsman - but
for landscaping, he'd always found that the best way was just to go
out and see how things looked on the actual site.
	An afternoon breeze ruffled his t-shirt.  Keiichi smiled; it
had been a hot week, and the breeze felt good.  In fact, quite a wind
seemed to be picking up, now that he noticed.  Might there be a storm
coming?  And why had the afternoon light turned orange?  It wasn't
anywhere near sunset-time - 
	"Keiichi!" a familiar voice cried off to his left.  He turned,
and in the next instant there was a figure beside him, crashing into
him.  "Get - "  A sudden, chilly dislocation, a sensation of falling.
" - DOWN!"
	Not for the first time in his life, Keiichi Morisato found
himself abruptly flat on his back with his face buried in his elder
sister-in-law's cleavage.  He extracted it and looked around; from
what he could see, he was now over on the other side of the courtyard,
next to the garage.
	"Urd," he grumbled, shoving her off, "what in - "
	A meteor streaked down out of the sky and slammed into the
courtyard, right where he'd been standing a moment ago.  Urd scrambled
up and hastily cast a barrier spell, deflecting the chunks of flaming
debris that came their way, as the shockwave rippled out from the
impact and shattered every courtyard-facing window in the complex.
	Keiichi, with the kind of calmness that only comes of having
been married to a goddess for a couple of centuries, waited for
everything to stop clattering, tinkling, and crumbling, then got to
his feet and surveyed the destruction glumly.  It wasn't really too
bad, except for the windows; decades of protection magics had kept the
buildings intact when, really, everything on the hilltop should have
been flattened.
	A moment later, Belldandy Morisato slid the door to the main
house open and stepped outside, a concerned look on her face.  "What
was that noi - oh MY," she said, pausing as she took in the smoking
crater and the shattered windows.  "Keiichi, are you all right?"
	"Fine, thanks to Urd," Keiichi replied.  He picked his way
through the scattered rubble and stood at the edge of the crater,
scrubbing in consternation at the unruly brown hair on the top of his
head.
	"Well," he said wryly, "here's your koi pond!"
	Bell chuckled as she made her way to his side.  "What do you
suppose did this?"
	"I dunno," Keiichi replied.  He waved aside the smoke still
rising from the crater, then jumped down from the edge and started
making his way to the bottom.
	"Be careful!" Bell called after him as Urd came up beside her.
"It might still be hot."
	The wind shifted, blowing the smoke clear, and Keiichi pulled
up sharply about halfway down the crater as he saw what lay in the
bottom of it.
	"... Oh, it's still hot, all right," said Urd dryly.
	"Urd!" Belldandy remonstrated - out of mere reflex, since she
was herself gaping in shock at the object which had demolished her
courtyard.
	"Now that's a real shame," Urd went on, unperturbed, "when
folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white girl like that."

	       /*  The Alarm  "Change II"  _Change_  */

		I have a message from another time...

		     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
			       presents

		UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT

			    Lost and Found,
		      or, A Time Lord's Holiday

			       starring
			  Donald E. Griffin
			  Katherine Griffin
			    and many more

			 Benjamin D. Hutchins
			 with Kris Overstreet

		(c) 2003 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


			   1 ALLARD AVENUE
			NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI
			       7:20 PM

	Kitty Griffin and her husband Don didn't eat out all that
often, first because they were both decent cooks, and second because
Don, not having a day job, had plenty of time to do that kind of
thing.  They sometimes joked about their domestic arrangement; Kitty
was fairly certain she was the only woman in the universe who could
claim a Time Lord as a house-husband.
	Today was a special occasion, or at least Don had decreed it
one; and so here they were at Allard's, the fancy-but-worth-it
restaurant on the ground floor of the Imperial Hotel Monolith, dressed
to the nines.  They didn't do -that- very often either, and so Don was
taking the opportunity to savor the sight of his love in that
strapless crushed-black-velvet number she only wore on days like this.
        Next to her grace and beauty, Don felt rather oafish and
coarse.  It had ever been such; she was a dancer and a figure skater,
and he was, well, not.  Though he kept in good condition, he could
never be called 'slim', and though she'd taught him to dance, he'd
never consider himself very good at it.  Even in his classically
styled black-and-white tuxedo, cut to accentuate the breadth of his
shoulders and outfitted with a scarlet vest and tie and shoes so shiny
you could see yourself in them, he felt like a sort of caveman.
        But so be it.  A caveman he may be, but he was a well-heeled
caveman - and he was the caveman she had chosen.
	Good enough.
	He looked across the table and saw her hazel eyes glinting at
him above a private little smile, knew that she'd just followed his
entire train of thought, and raised his wineglass.
	"To halfway!" he said.
	"I'll drink to -that-," Kitty replied wryly, and tapped her
glass ringingly to his. The day before, Kitty had announced her
official, incontrovertible, random guess that she was halfway done
with her master's thesis.  Since said thesis had been eating her brain
even more dramatically than had her undergraduate studies, that was
cause for celebration in Don's eyes, and so here they were.
	He was about to say something else, possibly a toast to the
eventual Doctor Katherine Pryde Griffin, but as he opened his mouth to
do so, he saw her eyes go slightly unfocused, a look of internal
concentration.  Don knew all of her looks, so he knew immediately what
this one was: She was focusing on her International Police Lens,
receiving a message from another Lensman.
	After a few seconds, she blinked, coming back to the room,
then looked at Don.
	"Something up?" Don asked.
	Kitty nodded.  "That was Gryphon," she said.
	Don raised an eyebrow.  "The First Lensman himself!" he
remarked.  "What's on his mind tonight?"
	Kitty smiled wryly.  "He says a friend of his over on
Tomodachi had a girl fall from the sky a little while ago and wreck
his yard, and the IPO observatory logged some kind of high-energy
spacetime event at about the same time, and would I please see if you
might be interested in checking it out?"
	Don raised the other eyebrow.  "Girl falling from the sky?
Yeah, that's our flavor of weird.  Do we have time to finish dinner?"
	"Sure.  He'd like us to stop by his office before we head out,
though."
	Don nodded, then sat back, surveyed his wineglass, and sighed
with mock glumness.  "And here we thought we were going to have a
nice, boring weekend at home... "
	Kitty giggled and signaled to the waiter for more bread.

			   UNKNOWN LOCATION
			       7:25 PM

	Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, better known to almost everyone in his
home reality as Magneto, was a man of rather aristocratic tastes and
manner.  He was a fastidious man, a snappy dresser, and liked things
to be dignified and calm.
	As such, he was momentarily nonplussed to find himself
awakening face-down on what seemed to be grimy asphalt.
	Slowly, painfully, he levered himself up to his hands and
knees.  His dignity prevented him from letting out the groan he really
wanted to let out as he raised his protesting frame upright.  As his
abused back crackled, straightening, he couldn't help but have the
thought, cliche though it was, that he was getting too old for this
kind of thing.
	He looked around - situational awareness was very important at
times like this - and immediately took note of two things:
	- He was no longer on a deserted island; instead, he appeared
to have awakened in an urban alley, a grimy, garbage-strewn one.
	- Charles Xavier was sprawled on the ground next to his
overturned hoverchair, having apparently arrived wherever they were
along with Magneto.
	Down at the end of an alley, a bum who had been sleeping under
a blanket of newspapers, very handily (if inadvertently) camouflaged
among the garbage, sat up, blinked blearily in Magneto's direction,
and inquired,
	"Hey BUDDY - did you jus' see a real bright light?"
	Magneto ignored him and knelt next to Xavier.  Having
determined that his old friend was, in fact, alive, the Master of
Magnetism was considering his options, and wondering whether there was
anything to be done about his pounding headache, when there was a
strange mechanical whirring sound behind him and light suddenly filled
the alley.
	Straightening, Magneto turned to see a car - no, a hovercraft
of some kind, it had no wheels - stopped at the mouth of the alley.
There were three young men in it; one of them was shining a flashlight
at him.
	"Hey, man," said the one with the flashlight.  In his other
hand, he held a weapon of some kind, and he leveled it along with the
light as he grinned.  "Nice hat."

			NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI
			       8:04 PM

	After everything else that had gone on that day, Keiichi
Morisato wasn't particularly taken aback by the sight of a Pepsi
machine materializing out of nowhere in the corner of his yard.
Besides, Gryphon had warned him that the troubleshooters he was
sending to look into their little incident would be arriving that way.
	For a moment, he thought it was Gryphon himself who was
emerging when the front of the machine swung open; then he got a
better look and realize that it wasn't.
	The man coming out of the Pepsi machine wore a dark green
trenchcoat with little silver circled-X badges on the collar tabs, a
red t-shirt with an orange design on the front that reminded Keiichi
of a Celtic knot, blue jeans, and battered jungle boots, and though
his clean-shaven face bore a distinct resemblance to Gryphon's, he was
noticeably taller and his hair was black.  They weren't alike, but
they could have been brothers.
	There was a woman with him, and for a second Keiichi thought
-she- was Gryphon's eldest daughter Kaitlyn.  She had the same slim
build and the same long, slightly curly brown hair - but her face was
different, she wore no glasses, and she, too, was a bit taller.  She
was dressed similarly, in jeans and a t-shirt, and her belt buckle had
that same circled-X design on it.  She also, Keiichi was mildly
surprised to note, wore a Japanese-style sword on her back, its
black-wrapped grip jutting up above her left shoulder.
	The green-coated newcomer shut the Pepsi machine behind him,
and then he and his companion crossed the yard toward Keiichi.
	"Professor Morisato?" he said, and when Keiichi nodded, he put
out a hand.  "Don Griffin; my wife, Kitty."
	"Pleased to meet you," Keiichi said, shaking both their
hands.  "Call me Keiichi.  Gryphon sent you, right?"  He laughed
lightly at himself.  "For a second I thought you were him."
	Don laughed.  "I get that a lot," he said, then turned to
survey the crater at whose edge Keiichi stood.  "Well!  This is your
visitor's divot, I take it?"
	"This is it," Keiichi agreed.  "Come on inside.  Whoever she
is, she's still asleep."
	They went inside and were introduced to Keiichi's wife Bell,
their several children (who filtered curiously in and out and never
slowed down enough for Don or Kitty to get a decent fix on them), and
Bell's sister Urd.  Don and Kitty knew her other sister, Skuld, who
was a colleague of Keiichi's at the Nekomi Institute of Technology and
also worked as the International Police's chief technologist, but had
never met the rest of the family before.
	Just as they were getting ready to head back to the guest room
for a look at the unexpected arrival, there was a knock at the door;
Bell went to answer it and returned a moment later with a trio of
people who were well-known to Don and Kitty.
	"Logan!" said Kitty with a smile as she went to embrace the
short, burly man in the lead.
	"Well, Jubilation," Don added with an air of satisfaction.
"Fancy seeing you here."
	Logan's companion, an Asian girl in her late teens dressed
(somewhat unseasonably) in what looked like a grey rain slicker over
shorts and an Art of Noise t-shirt, trotted across the room and
grabbed the Time Lord up in a hug.
	"Yeah, big surprise, I -figure-," said Jubilation Lee with a
grin.  "I only live here."
	"Hey, Don," said Logan, shaking the taller man's hand once
Jubilee let go of him.  "Got the word from Gryph on the Lens, figured
we'd swing by and see what we could do."
	The third man in the group was wearing a tweed suit and looked
every inch the college physics professor - except that he was
exceedingly muscular, clawed, fanged, equipped with digitigrade legs
and a very leonine muzzled face, and covered in blue fur.
	This didn't change the fact that he -was- a college physics
professor, but it did tend to catch some people off-guard.
	Dr. Henry McCoy, also known as the Beast for obvious reasons,
smiled and said, "I don't suppose you know anything more about it than
he does?"
	"Hank!" said Griffin delightedly.  He seized the blue
scientist's proffered paw and shook it.  "They actually let you out
of your lab?"
	"Academia has not yet built the prison from which the
boisterous Beast cannot escape in the name of high adventure, Donald,"
McCoy replied airily.  "Which reminds me," he added, becoming more
serious, "when are you coming to work for me?  The mysteries of time
and space cry out to be explained to our brighter students."
	Don chuckled.  "Not until Kitty's through with her master's,"
he told McCoy.  "She's thinking of doing her doctorate at NIT,
and if she does, then I'll see about getting work here - though I
might go over to Hotohori and see if they want a history prof
instead.  I'm not sure the Council would like it if I started throwing
back the veil of spacetime to a bunch of 25th-century physics
undergrads," he said with a wry grin.
	McCoy laughed.  "Fair enough."  He turned to Kitty, who had
finished exchanging greetings with Logan and Jubilee.  "Donald tells
me you might be thinking coming to NIT for your doctorate work."
	Kitty smiled, feigning exhaustion.  "If I ever finish my
frxgzntr -master's-," she said wryly.
	The Beast grinned widely, showing his muzzleful of long,
pointed teeth.  "Ah, that's something I've greatly missed about you,
Kitty.  You swear more creatively than anyone else I know."
	"That's because I learned to swear mostly from Lockheed,"
Kitty replied, laughing.
	"Where -is- the purple dragon, anyway?" Jubilee wondered.
	"Probably still sleeping in the laundry hamper," Don said.
	"He'll turn up if we need him," said Kitty, nodding.
	"So," said the Beast.  "Not that I'm opposed to socializing,
but - what do we know about the situation at hand?"
	"Not much, so far," Griffin replied.  "The TARDIS's
dimensional monitors did pick up a high-energy chronosynclastic event
about two hours ago, but it didn't last long enough for the system to
record any useful tracking data.  All we've really got to go on is in
the Morisatos' guest room right now."  He turned, smiling, to Bell.
"Which is a segue if I've ever heard one."

	"I can't imagine where she could have come from, poor dear,"
said Belldandy compassionately as she led the five back toward the
guest bedroom.  "Falling from the sky like that, initially I thought
she might be a colleague of mine, but she doesn't have the right aura
for it.  She's a mortal, whoever she is."
	Don and Kitty glanced at each other and smiled at the offhand
way Bell had put that; they knew, by way of knowing Skuld, that
Belldandy Morisato was a goddess.
	They arrived at the guest room door; Bell slid it open
slightly, glancing in through the crack, then smiled and opened it a
little wider.  "Hello!" she said.  "I'm glad to see you awake.  Don't
worry, you're among friends.  Do you feel all right?"
	"I... I think so," a soft voice replied hesitantly.  The four
X-Men glanced at each other, their faces all bearing identical "what
the?!" expressions.  Then Bell opened the door the rest of the way, so
that they could all see the visitor: a pretty young woman with blue
eyes and long blonde hair, dressed in a flannel nightgown, sitting up
on the room's low Tomodachi-style bed-cushion, and looking mildly
puzzled.
	Jubilee's face went blank with astonishment; she edged past
Belldandy into the room, gazing hard at the blonde stranger, and then
said in a voice just a little above a whisper, "Hayseed?"
	The blonde girl blinked, her face taking on exactly the same
expression.  "Mallrat?" she murmured.
	Jubilee lunged forward and caught her up in an embrace.
	"Well," said Don.  It seemed to be the only really appropriate
thing to say.

		     SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, EARTH
			5:27 PM (PACIFIC TIME)

  /*  G.F. Handel  "Alla Hornpipe"  Water Music Suite No. 2 in D  */

	Charles Xavier came back to consciousness to the sounds of
classical music and a rustling sound that he identified a moment later
as wind rushing past a speeding vehicle.  He opened his eyes, looked
around, and then blinked in disbelief.
	He was in a car, which wasn't all that surprising in itself
(unless one considered where he'd been -last-), but -what- a car.  The
bench seat he was sitting on was upholstered in what appeared to be
fake zebra; the dash was upholstered too, in what looked like red
leather, with big round quilting buttons.  There was a nodding-Jesus
statue affixed to the center of the dash, and the steering wheel was
made of welded chain links.
	And sitting behind that steering wheel, apparently perfectly
content with his surroundings, was none other than Erik Lehnsherr, one
arm resting on the top of the driver's door, one gloved hand gripping
the top of the outlandish steering wheel.  Magneto was humming along
with the radio, his helmet sitting on the seat beside him, next to a
paper bag.
	Noticing his passenger's movement, Lehnsherr smiled.  "Ah,
Charles, you're awake," he said.  "Good.  How do you feel?"
	"Disoriented.  Confused," Xavier answered truthfully.  "Erik,
where -are- we?"
	Lehnsherr smiled ironically, looking out the windshield, then
gestured negligently with his hand on the steering wheel.  "Two miles
from the Bayshore Expressway, apparently."  He switched hands on the
wheel, rummaged in the paper bag, and offered Xavier a small packet.
"Corn Nuts?"
	Xavier absent-mindedly took the packet, tore it open, and
started eating as he looked out the car's windows at their
surroundings.  It was a fairly ordinary highway, but the city around
it was anything but ordinary from his perspective, and he couldn't
help but notice that a decent proportion of the traffic around them
didn't appear to have -wheels-.  And up ahead... 
	"This isn't our world," he mused after a few moments.
	"That's what I've always admired about you, Charles," Magneto
said pleasantly as he guided the car under a huge, arching holographic
sign reading,

WELCOME to SAN DIEGO - HOME of the GAMES of the CXXX OLYMPIAD in 2412!

	"Nothing can ever elude your notice," Lehnsherr went on dryly,
"no matter how subtle."  Then his eyes narrowed as he caught sight of
something in the rearview mirror.  "Oh, -blast-," he said.
	"What?" Xavier inquired.
	"Well, unless those signals have a different meaning in this
world," Magneto replied conversationally, "I would guess that the
owner of this... remarkable... vehicle has regained consciousness and
reported it missing."  He put both hands on the wheel.  "Hold on,
Charles, this may get... interesting."
	"You may as well stop for them, Erik, and avoid a dangerous
chase," said Xavier resignedly.  "Under the circumstances, I can deal
with the police."
	The radio stopped playing music at that point, and a voice
said, "That was the hornpipe from Georg Friedrich Handel's Water Music
Suite in D.  It's 5:30 PM and time for the news.  President Clark
announced today that he would not seek re-election next year, choosing
instead to run for the Federation Senate.
	"In other news, the Psi Corps today announced the capture of
an outlaw telepath cell in Vienna, including the infamous P12 blip
Marcus Warren, who spent over 19 months on the Most Wanted list.
Search operations are escalating in all planetary sectors, officials
say, in hopes that the bust will cause other terrorist telepath cells
to react and break cover.  More news after this important message."
	As an advertisement for toothpaste began, Xavier and Lehnsherr
slowly turned their heads and met each other's eyes.
	Without comment, Magneto put his helmet back on.
	"On second thought," said Professor X, "perhaps we'd best
avoid the authorities for now."
	Magneto nodded calmly and put his foot down.

			     KAEBELSTADT
			      SWISS ALPS
		  2:27 AM (8:27 PM NEW AVALON TIME)

        "Stand down from security alert.  Intruder located; she's
unconscious."
        "So, who do you think she is?"
        "Beats me.  Scanners show Earth human with a couple of
oddities.  Check chromosome 19."
        "... what the hell?  The telepathy complex isn't supposed to
be -there- !"
        "Tell -her- that.  She's got to be a blip.  Her genescan
doesn't appear anywhere in our database."
        "Ja.  So, you think escape attempt maybe?"
        "... no, I don't think so.  There's no vehicle and no cover
for them to sneak away in.  And look here, and here, where the snow
melted around her."
        "Snow melts around people."
        "Not in a hemispherical crater.  I think we have a DDP here."
        "A DDP telepath?  You can't be serious.  The odds of that - "
        "You don't play poker, do you?"
        "Nein.  My grandmother taught me to play klabberjaas, and
that's the only card game I play."
        "Well, look up 'royal flush' in a book sometime.  When someone
deals me a royal flush, I don't ask for a re-deal.  Security, get a
med team prepped, heavy sedatives and psi inhibitors at the ready.
We're bringing down an unregistered blip of unknown power.  Identity
unknown."
        "Is a royal flush good?"
        "Almost as good as a teep with no identification, no origin,
and no family or friends to look for her."
        "Ah.  So the Corps just got a new kinder."
        "Yep.  And a redhead too.  Quite a looker.  Think she'll
remember me when they get done with her?"
        "If they do the job right, she won't remember -herself- when
they get done with her."
        "Yeah, too bad.  Gimme a hand with her, willya?"
        "I hope that snow holds off until our shift ends."
        "Me too.  Looks like one hell of a storm blowing up."

			   CFA NEW ORLEANS
			UNINHABITABLE SECTIONS
		  FREESPACER HOME FLEET, ZETA CYGNI
			       8:29 PM

	Bobby Drake reflected, upon regaining consciousness, that
among the many bad things a person might hear upon awakening, "I got
dibs on his boots" ranked somewhere around forty-third.  Not as bad as
"At last, X-Men, I have you totally in my power," but worse than
"Whattaya doin' in bed wit my goil, ya joik?!"
	Long experience with getting knocked out and captured by
probably hostile individuals had taught Bobby to keep his breathing
slow, steady and shallow while two people pawed his clothes looking
for valuables.  He cracked an eyelid just wide enough to get a view of
the two shadows, noting the placement of their hands.
	When the first mugger screamed at the sudden appearance of icy
handcuffs around his wrists, that's when Bobby came to life.  A quick
left hook knocked away the other thief, and a boot to the head
silenced the first one.  Bobby iced up the hands and feet of the
second thief, binding him securely.  The whole thing had taken maybe
three seconds.
	Bobby stood up, dusting himself off.  Wherever he was, it was
narrow; if he were just a fraction taller, he'd have to stoop to keep
his head from bumping the ceiling.  Every surface was metal except the
floor, and that was metal littered with garbage of some sort.  Light
only came into the passage from either end.  Bobby made the mistake of
looking directly at the light and had to squint for a few moments to
recover his night vision.
	Despite the smell of the corridor, Bobby took a deep breath.
The air was climate-controlled; low humidity, luckily he didn't need
to worry about -that- for icing purposes any longer.  He was indoors
somewhere big, and based on past experience he was willing to bet he
was on a spaceship of some kind.
	Obviously not the first-class accommodations.  Must have a
word with the cruise director.
	That established, he examined his assailants, both human, both
wearing ragged clothing not washed in decades.  Thief was probably too
strong a word for either of them; judging by the jagged knife he found
on the unconscious man's belt, murderer might not be strong enough.
Blood was still encrusted on the hilt.  He retrieved his wallet; a
moment later, he decided to go through the muggers' pockets as well.
Fair's fair, he thought, only to be disappointed when he came up empty
on both.
	"All right," he said, smiling at the conscious thug, "maybe
you could tell me where I am, hmm?"
	The mugger babbled incoherently.
	"Oh, wait, I forgot," Bobby said, "yes, I'm a mutant, booga
booga, now that we've got that out of the way, where the -hell- am I?"
	More babbling.  It dawned on Bobby that he'd picked the wrong
thief to send to dreamland.
	"Never mind," he said.  "Those'll melt in about twenty
minutes.  I suggest you see a doctor right away... frostbite can kill,
you know."
	More babbling as Bobby walked off down the corridor.
	The end of the corridor had jagged edges; obviously someone
had created an unauthorized exit where the original designers hadn't
intended one to be.  Air blew through the cross-passageway, which was
lit by a series of bare light fixtures.  Wires patched into the power
conduits linking the fixtures snaked back and forth along the
floor... deck, Bobby corrected himself, this is a ship, that is the
deck.  And these things are bulkheads... or hulls?  He never -could-
keep nautical terms straight.
	Another unauthorized door opened onto a largish area, and
Bobby looked through to see what, to him, looked like a Central
American village built from the scraps of a Galaxy Quest set.  He saw
between twenty and thirty people huddled here and there, mostly
filthy, all hungry-looking.  Open fires burned here and there in front
of cobbled-together hovels that hugged the walls of the chamber.  An
immense central shaft ran down the center of the chamber, with a door
in the side of it labeled TURBOLIFT MAINTENANCE ACCESS #C971.
	Bobby walked along the shacks, looking appalled.  Over half
the faces he saw were alien - definitively alien, not just
mutant-weird.  One green guy with a hollow snout for a mouth and
sucker-tipped fingers said something rude at him as he passed in a
language he didn't understand.  Bobby shrugged and kept walking, and
the green guy said it again, louder.
	Then Bobby got hit in the side by about ninety pounds of
fast-moving meat, and he went to the deck hard.
	"What the hell was -that- for?" Bobby grunted, pushing the
small figure off of himself.  He'd just been tackled by Oliver Twist,
if Oliver had green hair and a triangle mark in the middle of his
forehead.
	"Whattaya, some kinda dirtfoot?" the kid snapped.  He pointed
at the deck plate Bobby had been about to step on.  "That plate won't
take your weight!  Take a close look!"
	Bobby, nonplussed, did as the kid suggested.  He noticed,
almost immediately, that the gravity near the plate was a lot lower
than back in the air vent.  He also noticed, with concern, a soft
hissing sound where the plate joined the others around it.  "Is it
supposed to be hissing?" he said.
	"You -are- a dirtfoot," the kid grumbled.  "There's no -air-
on th' other sidea that plate.  Step in th' middle of that, and you,
th' plate, an' all th' air here gets a ride out ta th' good ship Dead,
cop it?"
	"Copped bigtime," Bobby said, picking himself up and edging
his way back from the loose plate.  "But isn't that unsafe?"
	"'Cos it is," the kid said.  "Didja expect safe in th'
Uninhabitable Sections?"
	"I didn't know -what- to expect," Bobby admitted.  "I'm kind
of lost."
	"Kind of lost," the kid grumbled.  "Dredd's a little cranky,
and you're kind of lost."  The little head shook dubiously; a grubby
gloved hand pointed back the way he came.  "Take a left in the air
vent, two rights and another left, then twenty meters up the access
ladder," he said, "that'll let you out in the residential compartments
behind Corridor Two.  You can find your way back to your hotel or
shuttle from there."
	"Um, yeah," Bobby said.  "Thanks."  Confused, he began walking
back the way he had come.  Kids these days have no respect for their
elders... he thought, then groaned, wondering, When the hell did I
become an elder?
	Probably about the time of that stupid X-Factor fiasco.  Yeah.
	Bobby was almost back to the vents when he heard a squeal of
pain behind him.  Shouts of pain and fear.  Familiar, kid-sized
shouts.
	It sucks having a conscience, Bobby thought as he ran back
into the shantytown.  The inhabitants had vanished, except for the
kid; he was being held up by his arms by a large guy with green skin
who didn't look bulky or ugly enough to be the Hulk.  He was dressed
much like his four colleages, each in matching leather jackets, dark
pants, and not much else.  The shortest of the five held a small blade
at the kid's stomach, smiling up at him from behind purple glasses.
	"C'mon, kid," the gang leader smiled, "young Mister Lynch
needs a new SoroSuub yacht, and everybody in th' organization donates
their share.  Now where's your take for th' week, hm?"
	"I gave ya everythin' I had yesterday!" the kid yelped.
	"Only two hundred credits?" the gang leader grinned.  "I know
better than that.  This is Zeta Cygni.  We got tourists and shoppers
out the Jeffries tubes."
	"Home Fleet Security's tightened up," the kid said, and got an
extra twist of the arms for his tone.  "OWW!  Can't-get-into-main-
corridors!"  The grip relaxed, and the kid finished, "An' I ain't
gonna snick th' folks back here!"  That brought another twist of the
arms.
	"You snick who we tell you to, kid," the gang leader said.
"Or else -we- snick -you-.  Get me?"  He nodded to one of his
colleagues, who smiled and popped a quartet of steel claws from one
fist.  Bobby blinked at that; this guy was a blond, so obviously Logan
was owed some royalties somewhere...
	No time for that now.  Let's get this over with.
	"Ahem."
	The gang turned to look at Bobby.  "Heh," the leader said,
"fresh meat.  Nice circus threads, Zed," he grinned, thumbing a switch
on his knife that set it to vibrating, "allow me to adjust it to fit."
	Bobby took one quick look around.  Nobody else very nearby,
not that he figured it would really matter if anybody saw what he was
about to do anyway, not here.
	The first ice spike caught the gang leader in the knife hand.
The blade fell to the deck, rattling loudly against the steel and
making it impossible for Bobby to hear the shouting as he planted a
fist right in the gang leader's face, breaking his nose and sending
him down.
	The big green guy dropped the kid, cracked his knuckles, and
charged Bobby.  How Juggernaut of you, Bobby thought, laying a quick
skim of ice on the deck immediately in front of him.  Then he stepped
aside, laying out more ice slick as the green thug slipped, fell, and
slid along the deck into a hovel, which collapsed around his head.
	Two down, three to go.  Two of the gang members pulled some
kind of gun, the third popped out his claws and smiled unpleasantly.
Smiles turned to screams as Bobby dropped the metal temperature of
both guns and claws down to liquid-nitrogen levels.  The clawed goon
screamed with pain, collapsing to his knees; the gunmen pried their
weapons off their hands, holding the frozen flesh to them, and took
off running.
	Bobby picked up the head of the gang leader, who was groaning
his way back to consciousness.  "Wake up, sunshine," Bobby growled.
"I got a message for you and your bosses."
	"Uuuugh?"
	"I want you to tell all your friends about me."
	"Wh-who are you?"
	Bobby picked up the gang leader - he didn't weigh much, maybe a
hundred forty - and stared him in the eyes.
	Then, as the gang leader stared back at him in horrified
fascination, Bobby Drake's body turned from warm, breathing flesh to
cold, hard, glittering silver-white ice, his skin becoming translucent
and then smooth and hard as his eyes turned to blue-grey crystals.
	"I'm Iceman," he said.
	Bobby dropped the gang leader, who scrambled back from him,
then forward again as he got too close to that hissing deck plate.
"Give me your jacket," he said.
	"W-what?"
	"Give me your -jacket-," Iceman said.  "That thing's too big
for you anyway, but it should fit me just about perfect."
	It didn't.  It was long enough, and the sleeves were about
right, but it was cut so that the bright shiny zipper teeth on the
front couldn't come together on anyone with more of a chest than Olive
Oyl.  Iceman slipped it on anyway; shiny black pleather on white ice.
Nice statement.
	"Now scram," he said.
	"What?"
	"Beat it!" Bobby barked.  "And tell your friends that if I
find anyone else down here holding people up by the arms and
threatening dissection," (he reached out a hand and sent a blast of
ice down to silence that damn vibroknife,) "then I will be VERY
UPSET."  Vapor came off his fist as he held it over the gangster's
face.  "Got the message?"
	The gang leader nodded, then split.  With him went the big
green thug, who looked fearfully at the white figure who'd just taken
out the whole gang.  The clawed guy just stayed curled up on the
ground, groaning loudly.  On the one hand, Bobby felt sorry for the
guy; he'd need immediate medical treatment to save those arms.  On the
other hand, considering what that guy would have done to -him-...
screw it.
	Time to make an exit.  Standing tall, squaring his shoulders,
he walked off to the air vent.  As he went, his body reverted to
normal, trailing condensate vapor in his wake.  By the time he was out
of sight, he was fully human again... which was a good thing, because
he couldn't hold in the laughter anymore.
	"Hahahahaha!!" he gasped, collapsing against the bulkhead.
"'I want your jacket.'  How corny!  How ridiculous.  And he GAVE it to
me!  HAHAHA!  'I'm Iceman!' 'I'm Iceman!'"  He broke up completely,
dropping to his knees and gasping for air.
	A wallet landed on the deck in front of him.  It looked
suspiciously like his.
	"Where th' frak do you come from anyway, dirtfoot?" the kid
grumbled.  "I can't spend any of that green garbage.  Where th' frak's
th' United States of America anyway?"
	"Um... Earth," Bobby said, picking up his wallet and examining
the contents.  On the one hand, he'd had his pocket picked... on the
other, he'd just been -rejected- by a pickpocket whose life he'd
saved... because his money wasn't good enough.
	"Well, -that- explains -everything,-" the kid sneered.  "Yer
prolly a Psi Cop.  Some kinda weird TK talent.  G'wan, get jet, we
don't want your kind here."  With that the kid vanished back into the
shantytown.
	Bobby decided not to follow.  Left at the vent, two rights,
left, up twenty meters... was that right?
	Whatever.  He'd find a way out.
	As soon as he found out... oh damn.
	"Kid!  Hey kid!!" he shouted back down the corridor.  "At
least tell me where the hell I -am-!!!"

			   SAENAR, SALUSIA
		  2:15 PM (8:15 PM NEW AVALON TIME)

	Rahne Sinclair came to more abruptly than some in her
position, largely because, just as she was starting to regain
consciousness, someone kicked her soundly in the ribs.
	With a yelp that turned into a snarl, she instinctively rolled
with the blow, shifting as she did so from her relatively fragile
human form to the much more powerful "hybrid" form which lay halfway
between there and her fully lupine form.
	Rahne wasn't a true werewolf; there was nothing supernatural
about her transformation, and the phases of the moon affected her no
more than they did any other woman.  Thanks to her particular spin on
the mutant gift, though, she could do a very convincing impression of
one - and without all the painful transformations and tendencies
toward mindless destruction, too.
	Only after she'd shifted and scrambled to her feet, ready for
action, did it occur to her that that might have been a bad move.  The
human who'd kicked her might react even worse to finding himself
suddenly confronted by a six-foot snarling wolf-girl.
	A moment later, she blinked, realizing that that wasn't going
to be an issue...
	... because the person who had kicked her wasn't human.
	He was human-oid-, a rangy, broad-shouldered fellow with all
his limbs, fingers, and facial features in more or less the right
place; but his face featured a muzzle and was covered in fur, and so,
judging by what was left exposed by his sleeveless t-shirt, was the
rest of him.  He was mostly black with a white streak on his face,
reminding Rahne rather comically of a cartoon skunk.
	He blinked at her, clearly surprised, and then blurted
something in a language she didn't understand.
	"What?" Rahne replied.  "I canna understand ye!"
	He blinked again, then brightened.  "I said whoa, sorry!  I
didn't see you there.  Were you asleep or something?"
	Rahne considered her response for a moment, then said, "Aye,
ah... I guess y'could say that."
	Shouts in that same alien language drifted to where they
stood.  Rahne, realizing the furry man didn't seem inclined to attack
her, took stock of her surroundings.  She was in a small clearing at
the edge of a wood, with trees to one side of her and a large,
fruit-bearing bush to the other.  The calling voices were coming from
the other side of the bush.
	The fellow who'd kicked her - tripped over her, apparently -
shouted something back in the same language, then took his own look
around before smiling, stepping around Rahne, and picking a plastic
disc up off the ground.
	"Funny place to nap," he said pleasantly.  "I'm Kerit, by the
way, Kerit Dagris.  What's your name?" he asked over his shoulder as
he headed around the bush.
	"Rahne," she replied, following automatically.  "Rahne
Sinclair."
	"Rain," said Kerit thoughtfully (if incorrectly) as they
emerged into a big, pleasant, grassy park.  "That's a nice name."
	Several other people like Kerit, three men and a woman, were
standing around in the grassy area, apparently waiting for him.  They
were all dressed similarly, too, in black pants, athletic shoes, and
grey sleeveless t-shirts.  Next to a park bench at the edge of the
grass was a portable music player, what looked like a cooler, and a
pile of white material which Rahne momentarily recognized as a heap of
jackets.
	A perfectly mundane scene of summer fun - except for all
the... fur.
	"Sorry, guys," said Kerit.
	"Hey, Kerit, what is it with you, anyway?" asked the shortest
of the men waiting, his teeth glinting in a broad grin.  "Even out
here, we send you into the bushes for the frisbee, and you come back
with a babe."
	Rahne blushed, comforted by the fact that they'd never see it
through her red-brown fur.
	"Behave, Nellis," said Kerit cheerfully.  "This is Rain
Sinclair."  Gesturing to the man who'd spoken, then the woman, then a
rather barrel-shaped fellow, and then a lanky guy who reminded Rahne
of a furry Sam Guthrie, he went on, "I'd like you to meet Nellis Ells,
his sister Natalie, Marton Dane, and Kelson Berg."
	"Sinclair?" said Dane, frowning thoughtfully.  "That's a human
name, I thought, but... "  He took off his little round glasses,
polished them on the tail of his untucked t-shirt, and put them back
on.  "You look Sirian to me.  Adopted by humans, perhaps?"
	"Marton!" said Natalie Ells, looking scandalized.  Then,
turning a smile to Rahne, she said, "Don't mind Dane, dear.  He was
born without social graces and never taught better."
	Berg, grinning indulgently, walked away shaking his head and
chuckling, headed for the cooler.
	"I merely believe in direct communication," Dane replied
loftily.  In the background, Berg picked up the cooler and carried it
back to the group, holding it up with one hand while he rummaged
inside with the other.
	Rahne could no longer contain her puzzlement.  "Who... who
-are- ye creatures?"
	They all snapped to attention (except Berg, who had put the
cooler down and was now rummaging in it with both hands), and Nellis
Ells declared, "We are Delta Squad, Second Platoon, Company B of the
Imperial Guard!"
	"We are pledged to lay down our lives in defense of Her
Majesty Asrial the First, Queen of Salusia and Empress of the
Interstellar Conglomerate!" Kerit added, and then they all chorused, 
	"LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!"
	While Rahne stared at them in total confusion, Kelson Berg
emerged from the cooler with a dripping glass bottle in each hand.
Grinning laconically, he extended one of them to Rahne and inquired,
	"Wanna beer?"
	Rahne blinked at him, then accepted the bottle, twisted off
the cap, and took a drink without really thinking about it.  Her
exposure to alcoholic beverages was somewhat limited, not to say
nonexistent - there was "conservative", and then there was Rahne's
upbringing somewhere to the right - but she didn't want to be rude.
She was surprised and mildly pleased to discover that it wasn't bad.
	"So," she inquired after a few moments, "what're guardsmen
doin' hangin' round a park, then?"
	"We're off duty," said Kerit.  "Figured we'd get in a little
Ultimate Frisbee.  How about you?  What's a Sirian girl doing sacked
out on the ground in Crown City Park?"
	Here Rahne was presented with a quandary.  On the one hand,
she was an essentially honest person, and letting these people go on
with the misconception that she was a Sirian (whatever that was) was
tantamount to a lie, something that always made her uncomfortable.  On
the other hand, as a mutant in a world unfriendly to mutants, she'd
become accustomed to being secretive about herself and her origins.
	So she hesitated, looking contemplatively at Kerit, for
several seconds; and in those several seconds, he started to look a
little worried.
	"Hey," he said, his voice compassionate rather than
accusatory, "you're not on the run or something, are you?"
	Rahne blinked.  "Certainly not!" she replied.  Then she
frowned thoughtfully and said, "Well, not -really-, I s'pose... "
	She wasn't sure entirely -why-, but at that moment, Rahne made
a snap decision.  She told Kerit what was going on.  Not -all- of it,
but a general snapshot of where she'd last been and more or less what
she'd been doing, and what had happened next.
	"... and then, I woke up here," she finished, shrugging.
	Kerit and Dane looked at each other; Dane nodded.
"Dimensional displacee," said the shorter, broader Salusian.
	"I figure," Kerit agreed.  "Aw, -man-.  The paperwork for that
takes forEVER."
	"So much for our free time today," said Dane glumly.
	Kerit thought about that for a second, then grinned.  "Not
necessarily.  Listen, this game works better with an even number of
players anyway - why not join us?  We can get you squared away with
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when we go on duty."

		     SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, EARTH
			6:07 PM (PACIFIC TIME)

	Charles Xavier was a man renowned among all his acquaintances
for his aplomb.  He wasn't the kind of man who raised his voice or got
excited in almost any situation, no matter how extreme.
	All the same, he couldn't help but express his concern for
life and limb just a bit when Magneto sent their stolen car crashing
through a barricade and then soaring off the end of an incomplete
entry ramp toward the brightly-lit streets of San Diego below.
	Magneto glanced toward his traveling companion as he used his
magnetic powers (which seemed to be regaining their strength nicely
after his initial exhaustion) to slow their plummet and put the car
down neatly on its hoverfield.
	"If you don't like it, Charles," he observed dryly as he aimed
the car into a side street and left the police miles behind, "you're
perfectly welcome to drive."
	Xavier shot his oldest friend and nemesis a dark look, but
hung on grimly to his arm rest and said nothing as Magneto wheeled the
hovercar smartly around a corner and into an even narrower side
street, really little more than an alley.
	"Well," said Lehnsherr with mock gravity as he guided the
vehicle to a stop.  "Much as it pains me to do it, Charles, I think
it's time we parted company with our chariot.  It'll be much too
conspicuous now."

	      /*  Isaac Hayes  "Theme from 'Shaft'"  */

	They weren't much less conspicuous on foot (as it were) - the
tall, aristocratic, elderly but powerfully-built man in the militarily
cut charcoal grey and maroon uniform, his head mostly hidden by a
close-fitting metal helmet, striding along next to the bald-headed,
hawk-nosed man in the ground-effect chair.  Still, they blended
reasonably well into the groups of people - human and otherwise -
thronging the sidewalks of San Diego, celebrating the end of the work
week.
	They wandered without much aim for several minutes, taking
stock of their surroundings.  Eventually, they arrived at an edifice
which, even in these surreal surroundings, they recognized
immediately.
	It was a shopping mall.
	Xavier and Lehnsherr glanced at each other, shrugged, and went
inside.
	The mall was crowded with people as variegated as those
outside, moving here and there in ones and twos and larger groups.
Most of the signs in the mall were legible.  Some were in languages
Xavier and Magneto recognized but couldn't read, and others were
complete mysteries.
	As they moved through one of the mall's corridors, a multiply
pierced teenager in a t-shirt advertising what had to be a rock band
(what else would "the Thrashing Gnoberts" be?) leaned out of one of
the shopfronts and called to Xavier.
	"'Ey!  Bald man!"
	Xavier paused and turned his chair.  "Are you talking to me?"
he said.
	"Yeah," said the teenager, nodding sagely.  "You need spinal
shunt, man?  20 dollar, cheap.  15 more, nanostim treatment for your
legs.  Wheel in, walk out, 2 hour.  Whatta you say?"
	Xavier blinked.  "Er... perhaps some other time, thank you,"
he said.
	"OK, what about retrofit for that clunker you ridin'?" said
the teenage salesman agreeably.  "StarkTech repulsorlift kit, 50
bucks.  Turn you into a pod racer, 20 minutes."  He waggled his
eyebrows.  "Chicks dig it."
	Magneto turned and gave the kid a cold stare.
	"Go back inside your shop, young man," he said calmly, "before
I demonstrate to you the folly of implanting that much metal in your
nose and tongue."
	"OK, man, 's cool," the salesman replied, retreating.
	"Young people," said Magneto with a disgusted shake of his
head.
	Xavier favored him with a bemused little smile as they
proceeded down the concourse toward the center of the mall.
	They stopped at a sort of chrome-rimmed balcony overlooking
the mall's central food court.  There, people sat at small tables
scattered around a large tiled area surrounding a fountain.  Hanging
in the air all around the fountain were holographic display fields
showing what appeared to be the evening news.
	The two men watched silently for several minutes as the
commentator described goings-on on Earth and around a multistellar
polity called the Earth Alliance, then delved into the doings of an
apparently larger country referred to as "the Federation".  Xavier was
only half paying attention to the news by now; his fascinated eyes
kept tracking around the mall itself, taking in the great variation of
the crowd.
	Then, as he turned to look at the flow of people on the upper
level behind them, he noticed the shopfront behind Magneto and smiled.
	"I think, Erik," he said, "it's time we did a little research."

			NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI
			       9:12 PM

	It took Don Griffin only about five minutes to determine that
the Paige Guthrie who had crashed into the Morisatos' yard was, in
fact, from the same now-pocket universe he himself hailed from.  This
was accomplished through the application of a simple instrument which
resembled a walkie-talkie with blinking-lighted arms, and a bit of
hmming, while Paige sat looking bewildered with the blankets bunched
up at her waist.
	Then he pocketed the device, sat down cross-legged on the
floor, put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, and
said, "So.  What happened?"
	Paige told him what she knew, which wasn't a hell of a lot;
but by the way he frowned thoughtfully and nodded occasionally, she
got the impression that what she was saying was of more use to him,
perhaps, than to her.
	He listened, and then put a hand on her shoulder and smiled at
her.  "OK.  How do you feel?"
	"Pretty good, considering," she replied.  "Except... "  She
paused, looking troubled, then leaned closer and murmured, "... I
think... my power's gone."
	Don nodded.  "You pushed it pretty hard," he said.  "If I
remember right, you normally only get one power per change."
	Paige nodded.  "I don't remember exactly what I was trying to
do... it's all kind of a blur.  I just remember that it -hurt-... "
She reached up and tugged experimentally at a handful of her long
blonde hair, then winced.  "... and now... nothing."
	"It may not be permanent," Don said reassuringly.  "Many's the
time an X-Man's powers have been disrupted by injury or strain.  They
usually come back to normal on their own.  Once I've sorted this
current mess out, I'll do a full scan and see what I can do for you,
OK?"
	Paige nodded.  "I'd appreciate that.  Thank you."
	Don smiled.  "Get some rest.  I have to see what the TARDIS
can make of the data you've given me."
	He got up, reached down and patted her shoulder again, then
turned and left the room.
	"What do you think?" Kitty asked as she and the Beast followed
him through the living room and out to the TARDIS.
	"I think we might have a problem," Don replied.  He unlocked
the TARDIS and went into the dome-ceilinged white control room with
its 1950s Rocketship Provincial decor, plugged the portable diagnostic
module he'd used on Paige into the control console, and dumped its
data into the main sensor control computer.
	He worked in silence for about five minutes, peering into a
microscope-like viewfinder built into the sensor panel, then stood
back from it with a thoughtful, "Hmph."
	"'Hmph' what?" asked Jubilee, who had followed, along with
Logan and their host, into the control room.
	"We used Magneto as the core of the generator that powered the
vacuum-emboitment charger," said Don.  "I'm not sure of the details -
I'll have to scan -him- for that - but I think what must have happened
is that he picked up an attunement to the CVE in the process.  Paige
said that he was pushing himself hard, stretching his sphere of
influence past its normal limits, when the sky turned orange and
everything got weird."
	"So you figure he's been carrying some kind of resonance with
him this whole time... " Kitty began, and Don nodded.
	"And never pushed himself hard enough to set it off before
now," he said.
	Hank McCoy nodded thoughtfully.  "It's the only idea that fits
the data so far," he agreed.
	"Anyway, I've given the computer the chronosynclastic profile
I got from Paige," Don said.  "It should be able to analyze the logs
and find the arrival points of any others."
	Kitty looked troubled.  "If there are others... do you suppose
the same thing might have happened to them that happened to Paige?"
	"Appearing in space?  I doubt it," Don replied.  "For some
reason, live dimensional displacees tend to gravitate toward habitable
environments, even in a scattering scenario like this one.  Paige only
missed by about 10,000 miles."
	He chuckled.  "The Time Lord archive has a surprising amount
of data about incidents like this," he went on.  "The computer figures
there's about a 1 in 1,000 chance of an error like the one that
happened to Paige - so whoever came along, odds are they're fine."

				TAKKAR
		   CAPITAL CITY OF CARDASSIA PRIME
			   CARDASSIA SECTOR
		      9:25 PM (NEW AVALON TIME)

	On the corner of Derzin Street and Bolya Avenue, in the heart
of downtown Takkar, stands an unassuming grey-brick building, dull and
colorless even by Cardassian standards.  Despite its unprepossessing
appearance, though, this building is one of the most feared in
Cardassian space.  Pedestrians cross to the other side of the square
just to avoid walking past its grim grey facade.  Its address is
spoken in whispers, if at all.
	It is the headquarters of the Obsidian Order, that fearsome
organization which is both intelligence agency and secret police force
to the Cardassian Union.
	Or, rather, it -was-, until today.
	The official histories do not say what destroyed the building
at Derzin and Bolya.  They claim that the building and much of the
surrounding few blocks were leveled by a bomb planted by a dissident
organization, though they are careful not to say which one.
	They say this because the official historians felt that the
true cause of the building's destruction was too bizarre to be
believed by succeeding generations.

	First Prefect Elar Markat stood at the perimeter of the
devastated zone which, until this afternoon, had contained the most
feared building in the Cardassian Union.
	"Situation?" he asked the subaltern standing at the tape with
a portable sensor kit.
	"Sir, the object is moving," the subaltern replied, peering
intently at the monitor panel of his sensor unit.
	"Moving?!" Markat blurted.
	"Yes, sir.  It's still hot from re-entry," the subaltern said,
"but it's definitely moving.  Slowly, only about one tabak per hour,
but... "  He turned to Markat, looking shocked and a bit worried.
"Sir, it's headed this way."
	They heard it before they saw it, a rhythmic "crump... crump...
crump" from the smoke-filled disaster zone, faint at first and growing
stronger.  The sound reminded Markat of the relentless stride of a
Destroid - but what Destroid could survive an unassisted fall from
orbit?
	This was no battlepod landing area; the object which had hit
the Obsidian Order's headquarters had been traveling at meteor speeds.
The sky over Takkar was still grey with dust from the impact, and
would be for days; windows had been broken for miles around by the
shockwave.  Any Destroid which made such a landing would be nothing
more than slag and vapor.
	So what -was- it?
	A moment later, it became dimly visible, a shape moving within
the curtain of smoke that still obscured the impact zone.  As it drew
nearer, Markat, the subaltern, and all the members of the cordon of
armed police on the scene remarked to themselves that it was much
smaller than they had expected.  It was quite large for a -man-, but
to be making such resounding footfalls, they would have expected it to
be much larger.
	A moment later, it emerged from the smoke at the edge of the
cordon, and Markat and his men drew back in shock.
	It was a man, a huge, hulking man dressed in dark red, the
color of dried human blood.  Vast muscles rippled across his frame as
he advanced, his bootsoles crushing the rubble beneath his feet.  His
arms were bare except for some bands of dark-red metal, and at first
glance he appeared to have no head, an illusion created by the
dome-shaped helmet which surmounted his shoulders and nearly matched
them in breadth.  Through three small ports on the front of the
helmet, a pair of eyes and a mouth could be seen, the former narrowed
with annoyance, the latter pressed into a tight, irritated line.
	This creature came nearer, something of the horrible
inevitability of a machine or a glacier in his stride, and then
paused, raised one massive hand, and pointed a thick finger at Markat.
	"You," he said in a deep, rather gravelly man's voice.  "What
are you?  Where the hell am I?"
	Markat blinked - whatever this man was, he spoke the language
of Earth - and summoned his own knowledge of the tongue to reply.
	"You are under arrest for the destruction of Cardassian state
property!"
	The behemoth seemed to find that bemusing; he drew back a
half-step, his upper body tilting to make up for the fact that he
couldn't cock his head in that helmet.
	Then he leaned forward, his masked face tilting down toward
Markat's, and he said through his teeth, "Maybe you didn't HEAR me,
scaleface.  WHERE, AM, I?"
	Markat was proud of himself for not letting his voice quaver
as he leveled his disruptor, thumbed it to full power, and commanded
the monstrous human to remove his helmet and lie down on the ground.
	The giant's scowl deepened further.
	"OK," he said.  "You wanna do it the -hard- way, huh?"  He
cracked his massive knuckles.  "Kind of day I've had?  I'm up for
that."
	He took a step, and Markat fired.  As he did, so did his men,
and the red-clad giant disappeared briefly behind a screen of
disruptor beams which reached a near-blinding intensity.  Nothing
could survive a bombardment like that; even a sheet of starship
tritanium would be burned through by such concentrated fire from the
most powerful hand weapons in the Union.
	A new curtain of smoke, this one generated by the beams
scorching the very air, rose into the air as Markat ordered his troops
to cease fire.
	A moment later, an enormous shape loomed out of the smoke and,
moving much faster than a creature of such bulk should be able to
move, swatted the weapon from his hand with a tremendous backhand.
	The helmeted giant, completely unscathed, picked up First
Prefect Markat by the front of his uniform tunic and hurled him into
the Second Battalion, scattering them like bowling pins, and then
ignored the others completely, turning southward.
	Off in the distance, Cain Marko could see a tall, obvious
building which was, dollars to donuts, some kind of government center.
There would probably be answers there.  It was a good five miles away,
and it seemed like every jerk on this planet was between him and it,
but that didn't matter.
	He might have found the family he'd never realized he wanted
with the X-Men, and his temper might have been moderated, and his love
for mayhem for its own sake might have abated... but Cain would always
enjoy teaching new people the futility of trying to stop the
Juggernaut.

			NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI
			       9:37 PM

	Kitty Griffin was sitting in the courtyard, sipping tea and
chatting with Logan, Jubilee, the Beast, the Morisatos, and Paige,
when Don emerged from the TARDIS looking pleased with himself.
	"Got the first signature lock," he said.  "Back at Zeta Cygni,
believe it or not."
	Kitty put down her teacup, stood up, and brushed at her
jeans.  "Well, I guess we'd better get busy, then," she said.
"Mrs. Morisato, thanks for the tea."
	"Anybody who's up for a reunion, all aboard," said Don
jauntily.  McCoy, Logan, and Jubilee said their farewells and headed
for the TARDIS, but Paige hesitated.
	"Hey, kiddo," said Griffin, noticing.  "Aren't you coming?
I've got plenty of clothes in the TARDIS, we can find you something to
wear."
	Paige looked at her toes.  "I guess not," she said sadly.
	"Why not?" asked Kitty, concern in her voice.  "I thought you
felt better."
	"I feel fine," Paige assured her.  "It's just... I don't think
I'd be much use to you.  If you ran into trouble... I'd just get in
the way without my power."
	Don crossed to her, put his hand on her shoulder, and smiled.
"Our powers aren't what make us X-Men, Paige.  Hell, -my- power
happens all inside my -head-.  And you know, when I first joined the
team, Storm was our leader - and at the time, she didn't HAVE any
powers."  He smiled at a distant memory.  "You should have seen her
whip up on Cyclops in the Danger Room.  Man, that was something to
see."
	Paige's morose expression was cracked by a slight smile at the
image.  "I've seen Sam's photo album from back then," she said.  "That
was during her punk phase, wasn't it?"
	Griffin chuckled.  "Yeah.  It's funny, but even now I always
think of 'Roro with the mohawk first."
	"She's been wearing dreads lately," said Paige.
	"Hm.  I bet that's something to see, too," Don replied with a
grin.

			 HIPSVILLE, FUNKOTRON
		 10:42 AM  (9:42 PM NEW AVALON TIME)

	Like Magneto, Ororo Munroe woke up on asphalt.  Slowly,
painfully, she levered herself upright and took stock of her
situation.
	She thought at first that she was in a courtyard, bounded on
all four sides by a low curb and flooded with sunlight from a
brilliant blue sky above.  Then a bit more of her mind spooled up to
wakefulness and she realized it wasn't a courtyard, it was a rooftop.
	Storm walked to the edge of the roof and looked, and what she
saw momentarily defied her understanding.  Eventually, she realized
that what she was looking at was a field containing a huge crowd of
people.  The field - probably a park of some kind - was across the
street from the building on which she stood, which seemed to be about
three stories high.  Off in the distance, under some trees, she could
see what looked like a stage with an acoustic shell.  The sea of
humanity in the field was facing that way.
	Trying to clear her thoughts, Ororo found a ladder on the side
of the building and climbed down into the alley.  She'd just dropped
to the pavement when she heard someone clear his throat behind her.
	Still a bit jumpy from the situation she'd been in when she
blacked out (never mind the surreality of where she'd awakened), Storm
whirled, the metal weights at the ends of her dreadlocks clacking
gently against each other as they swung.
	There, she saw a man in blue trousers and a tie-dyed blue
shirt.  It took her a moment to realize that the shirt was not a
t-shirt, as was usual for tie-dye, but rather a dressy button-front
shirt with a collar; its original color seemed to have been a pale
blue.  He also had on a peaked cap, tie-dyed in the same colors.
Around his waist he wore a heavy leather belt burdened with equipment
- a flashlight, handcuffs, a holstered pistol - and on his chest,
bright against the tie-dye pattern of his shirt, was a chrome shield.
	... He was a POLICEMAN?
	He grinned at her, showing a couple of gold teeth.
	"Righteous dreads, honeychile," he said in an accent that
struck her as Caribbean (which was a little weird, since he was white,
but it sounded genuine, not put on).  He seemed not at all
disconcerted to have just encountered a white-haired, blue-eyed black
woman in a buckle-festooned black leather jumpsuit and cape climbing
down the fire escape of an apartment building.
	"Lookin' for a better view of the festival, huh?" the tie-dyed
cop went on.  "Probably a pretty good view up there, but the acoustics
ain't shit," he said.  "Not from around here, huh?"
	"No... I'm from New York," said Ororo, figuring that was
safe to say; wherEVER she was, it certainly wasn't New York.
	The cop's grin widened.  "Ahh," he said.  "Earth.  Right on.
You find t'ings be a little different on Funkotron, ya."
	Then, to Ororo's continuing puzzlement, he reached to a pouch
on his belt, handed her a flower, and said, "Have a good time now,
sweet thing," before sauntering off down the street.
	Storm looked at the flower for a moment, then shrugged and
went across the street to the edge of the crowd of people.
	"Excuse me," she said to the first person who looked
relatively normal, a college-age-looking girl in a green tank dress.
"What's going on?"
	The girl looked at Storm in disbelief.  "Don't you KNOW?" she
asked, her voice squeaky with dismay.  "It's only the biggest music
festival of the YEAR, girl!  The Pan-African Folk Funk Fusion
Festival!"
	"Folk... funk... fusion," said Ororo dubiously.
	Before she could say anything more, a wave of cheering swept
over the crowd, followed by the sound of drums.

			NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI
			       9:54 PM

	Don Griffin had been ready to go when he came out and
announced that he had the first fix, fifteen minutes ago.  Urd didn't
know that for an absolute fact, but, from his bearing and that of his
wife, she was pretty sure of it.  He was dubbing around, "refining the
fix," solely to kill some time in hopes that Paige Guthrie would
decide to go with them despite believing that she'd lost her powers.
	Urd smiled to herself and prepared a couple of things she
would need in order to fix that.
	"Oh, Paige?" she said.
	"Yes, Miss - uh, Urd?" Paige responded, amending her statement
in mid-flow as Urd raised an I-told-you-before finger.
	"Bell doesn't like her cat to wander around outside," Urd told
her.  "Would you be a dear and take her in?"
	Paige gave her a rather puzzled look at that - the cat, a fat
calico specimen, didn't seem to be wandering anyplace, but rather lay
on an intact flagstone not far from the entrance to the temple,
apparently asleep.  But Paige's mother raised her right; she was a
guest (and a guest who had made a huge hole in the yard, to boot), so,
asked to do one of her hosts a favor, she did her best to do it.
	She bent down, slipped her hands under the sleeping cat, and
picked it up... or tried to.  It wouldn't budge.  It was as though the
cat was glued to the ground.
	Paige paused for a moment, giving the cat (which remained
serenely unconscious) a puzzled look.  Sure, it was fat, but
-really-.  She tried again; again it wouldn't move.
	Conscious of Urd's gaze, Paige felt her face getting red.
She'd been through quite a bit today, but she didn't -feel- weak,
certainly not so weak that she couldn't lift a cat.  She braced her
feet against the ground on either side of the cat and tried a third
time.  Nothing.
	Gritting her teeth, she tried harder, focusing all her will on
the task.  Her arms strained; a fine sweat broke out on her forehead;
she could feel the muscles in the backs of her legs quivering.
	So focused was Paige on what she was doing that she didn't
notice cracks starting to form in the flagstones under her feet.
	One of the cat's back paws came up a little bit, just barely
clearing the ground; but then Paige relented, letting it back down
with an explosive outrush of breath, and straightened up, rubbing
ruefully at her smarting calf and thigh muscles.
	"I guess it must've hit me harder'n I thought," she mused.  "I
can't even pick up a cat."
	"I'd have been surprised if you had been able to," said Urd
with a smile, "given that Packet weighs about a thousand tons just
now."
	Paige gaped at her.  "... What?"
	"A simple spell," Urd said.  With a dismissive wave, she
released the cat from the enchantment, at which point it awoke,
blinked a little blearily around, and then strolled into the house.
	"A... thousand tons?" Paige murmured, looking down at her
hands.  Only then did she notice the cracks in the flagstones where
she'd had her feet braced.  "Wow."
	"Hey, speaking of magic," said Urd offhandedly, "would you
like to get a better look at your divot?"
	"Beg pardon?" said Paige, coming back from her reverie.
	"I said would you like to get a better look at your divot?"
asked Urd, gesturing to the crater.
	"Uh... sure," said Paige.
	Urd smiled and handed her a pebble.  "Here.  It's called a
flightstone.  You're a smart kid, you can probably figure out what it
does from the name."
	Paige regarded the little rock dubiously.  "This rock makes
you fly?"
	Urd nodded.  "Would I lie to you?" she said with an
emerald-eyed wink.  "Just hold it in your hand and think of flying.
It's easy once you get the hang of it."
	"Won't someone see me?"
	The white-haired goddess laughed.  "Takes more than a flying
girl to interest -our- neighbors," she said.  "G'wan, have a look."
	Paige gave her an uncertain look, then closed her hand around
the pebble and took on a thoughtful expression.
	After a moment, she seemed to lighten, coming up on tiptoe;
then she separated from the ground entirely and floated into the air.
A smile crossed her face as she got accustomed to the sensation, and
before long she'd ventured up to about a hundred feet, where she could
get a good view of the crater she'd left in the Morisatos' yard.
	Hardly seems possible, she thought, that I could have made
that and lived.  Colossus, maybe, or Juggernaut... or Sam... but me?
What did I -do- to myself?
	On the ground, Jubilation Lee came up next to Urd, and the two
stood watching Paige explore the air.  Jubilee chuckled, thinking that
her friend resembled Wendy from "Peter Pan", flitting around the night
sky barefoot in that long flannel nightshirt.  Then she leaned toward
Urd, not taking her eyes off Paige, and said,
	"You picked that rock up off the ground about a minute before
you gave it to her."
	"Of course I did," Urd replied, also without looking.  She
smiled and added, "You think she'd have tried it if I'd just said, 'I
think you can fly'?"
	Jubilee smirked.  "Point," she said.  "All the same... I never
liked power crutches," she added.  Then she cupped her hands around
her mouth and yelled, "Hey, HAYSEED!  That's just an ordinary ROCK!"
	Paige paused in flight, looked down, wobbled a little, and
called down, "What?"
	"There ain't no magic pebble, Paige!" Jubilee yelled back,
grinning broadly.  "You're FLYIN'!"
	Paige recoiled in surprise, and in doing so, lost her
concentration.  With a cry of dismay, she fell the hundred feet to the
ground, slamming down on the paving stones a few yards from the edge
of her crater with a heavy THUD.
	Then she sat up, shook her head, and gave Jubilee a dirty
look.
	"That was -totally- uncool, Mallrat," she growled.
	"Oh, what," Jubilee replied, unconcerned, as she stuck out a
hand to help her old classmate to her feet.  "Like you'd'a survived
makin' THAT," she went on, angling a thumb over her shoulder at the
crater, "if you weren't invulnerable."
	Paige dusted off her nightshirt, tried to sustain her scowl,
then gave up and grinned.
	"I guess you have a point," she said.
	Don Griffin emerged from the TARDIS, looking puzzled.  "What
was that yell?" he asked.
	"Oh, nothing," said Jubilee innocently.
	Paige crossed to him and said, "If you don't mind,
Mr. Griffin, I think I'll come with you after all."
	Don grinned.  "'Course I don't mind.  Delighted," he said.
"There's only one rule."
	"What's that?"
	"If you're coming along, you have to call me Don.  C'mon,
Jubilation, we're about ready to go.  Where's Logan?"

	Five minutes' worth of goodbyes and thank-yous later, the
TARDIS vanished from the corner of the Morisatos' yard, and Keiichi
yawned and mentally turned the page on another weird day in the life.
	"What a nice young couple," said Belldandy.  "I do hope we see
them again."
	"Who?" asked Urd with a grin.  "Don and Kitty, or Paige and
Jubilee?"
	Bell flashed her elder sister a look of tolerant reproach.
"Urd, -really-," she said, and then turned and went into the house.

			SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
			7:17 PM (PACIFIC TIME)

	With all the strange changes in the future world he found
himself in, Charles Xavier was strangely comforted by the fact that
Indigo bookstores hadn't changed.  Well, they had in a way; they sold
a lot of data solids in addition to old-fashioned books, and the decor
was sleeker, more modern.  But the places still had books, and they
still didn't mind if you hung around browsing through them without
buying anything.
	He and Magneto had spent the last hour and change in the
history section, leafing through books about the Telepath Problem and
the history of the galaxy.  With the limited supply of local currency
Lehnsherr had 'acquired' along with the car, they'd been able to buy
only a newspaper and one volume for later perusal, but Xavier had
found a good volume.
	Now they sat at one of the tables in the food court, eating
nachos (all they had the change for after buying the book) and
flipping through a volume appropriately entitled "So You've Just
Arrived from a Parallel Universe".
	At first, upon spotting it on the shelf, Xavier had assumed
this book was a joke, some kind of humor work.  Having read the first
chapter, though, he now realized that though it -did- contain a good
deal of humor, it was in total earnest about its subject matter.
	The realization, and its following implications, struck Xavier
deeply, and he sat for several minutes in thought, watching the mall
patrons come and go, while Magneto thumbed through the book.
	"Look at this, Erik," he mused quietly after a few moments.
"This goes beyond the peaceful coexistence of humans and mutants.
These people are part of a fully integrated -galactic society-!"
	Magneto nodded, making a rumbling sound that might have been
agreement.  Then, though, he gestured soberly to one of the holopanels
above them and said,
	"It's not quite a utopia, though, is it."
	Xavier looked, and there on the screen was a cadre of men and
women clad in severe black uniforms.  They each had a golden badge
inscribed with the Greek letter Psi, and they were escorting a
bleary-eyed, clearly drugged man in a grey prisoner's coverall and
manacles down a tiled corridor somewhere.
	The voiceover lauded the Psi Corps enforcement team's capture
of Marcus Warren, the infamous renegade Psi Cop and leader of one of
Europe's biggest telepath terrorist cells, while scrolling text
detailed Warren's crimes, which included helping an estimated two
hundred telepaths avoid mandatory conscription into the Corps.
	The piece was followed by an advertisement for the Corps -
concerned parents being told by a calm-faced man in black that their
teenage son was a telepath, the boy being taken from his home and
taught to use his power for the Good of Mankind, eventually becoming a
steadfast, black-clad sentinel of justice.  The message was clear -
trust the Psi Corps, we're your friends - but there was something so
ineffably sinister about the whole thing that Xavier's blood felt cold
in his veins just watching it.
	"Remind you of anything?" Magneto asked in a softly ironic
tone.  "One wonders if the man responsible for this 'Psi Corps' was
named Kelly."
	Xavier grunted noncommittally, still intent on the screen.
	"At any rate," Magneto went on, "if they track and arrest
unregistered telepaths with such zeal, and they have any reliable way
of detecting them, then we have have a serious problem.  We should get
off this planet as soon as we can."
	Xavier came back to himself with a start.  "Yes," he agreed,
looking a bit shaken.  "We should."
	"According to this," said Magneto, tapping the newspaper, "it
appears that there is someone who bears a remarkable resemblance to
Don Griffin in charge of a law enforcement organization that promotes
peace and welfare, and is not particularly well-liked by the Psi
Corps."
	As if summoned by Magneto's mention of the name, a man in the
black, gold-badged uniform of the Psi Corps walked past the table
carrying a tray of food.  He gave the Master of Magnetism's helmet a
curious glance, but he was mostly engrossed in thoughts of his
impending lunch, and paid the two no further mind as he went to an
empty table about halfway across the court and sat.
	Once he'd gone, Magneto gave him an ironic glance, then turned
back to Xavier and continued, "Perhaps we should try to find a way to
reach this... Babylon 6."

			      THE TARDIS
			 INTERSTITIAL VORTEX
		 10:24 PM (RELATIVE NEW AVALON TIME)

	Don looked up from monitoring the TARDIS's navigational
instruments when the double doors leading deeper into the timeship's
interior opened and Jubilee emerged, looking triumphant.
	"OK, Griffin, you need to index those clothes rooms better.
This is the best I could do in half an hour of digging.  It'll do for
now, I guess."
	As Jubilee spoke, Paige emerged from the corridor into the
control room, a slightly self-conscious smile on her lips, and struck
a half-hearted pose to model the clothes she and Jubilee had found in
the TARDIS's vast banks of costumery.
	The outfit was a two-piece steel-blue number made of some
material midway between fabric and leather in texture, a knee-length
panel-fronted skirt and a jacket-like top with a notch collar, both
sporting ribbed fabric inserts on the sides and classy gold piping.
It looked like a uniform, though not one that most of the viewers
recognized - except Don.
	"Ah," he said.  "I see you found the Kryptonian section.
That's actually a traffic policewoman's uniform, but it's about 500
years out of date, so I wouldn't worry.  It looks good on you, and
it'll be plenty tough enough to keep up with you."
	"It's a start," Jubilee admitted, "but it needs more work."
	"I think it looks fine," Paige said.
	"That's because you're a hayseed from Kentucky," Jubilee
replied dismissively.
	"West Virginia."
	"Whatever."
	Don chuckled and turned his attention to the control board as
a light started flashing.  "All right, here we are!  First stop, CFA
New Orleans."  He worked a couple of controls, and the Time Rotor in
the center of the control console slowed, then stopped.  The bright
electric arc inside it went out as it stopped, silencing the low,
throbbing buzz that always filled the room when the timeship was in
motion.
	"OK.  For those of you who haven't been here before: The New
Orleans is a large spaceship," Don said, bringing up a hologram of the
vessel on a display, "which represents the heart of the nomadic nation
known as the Confederate Freespacers Alliance.  It's just under two
miles long and a bit more than half a mile thick, and at any given
time there's about a hundred thousand people on it.  Think of it as a
flying shopping mall-slash-bazaar."
        "Sounds like the Mallrat would be right at home," Paige noted,
shooting a little grin across the console at Jubilee, who pretended to
be annoyed.
        "In some parts, yes," Don said.  "Think of it as being sort of
like Cairo.  There's some fancy districts, there's a huge Bazaar...
and there's also some very, very bad parts, places people shouldn't
even live, where things can be very dangerous for the unwary."
        "And which part are we going to?"
	"We're landing in the Bazaar - it's the easiest place to find
your way back to.  I couldn't get an exact fix, so we'll have to do a
little hunting the old-fashioned way," said Griffin.  "The Bazaar
itself is relatively safe, but keep your eyes open, boys and girls;
this place can get a little rough."

        A left, two rights, a left, an up three lefts, two rights, a
left, a right, a down, a counterclockwise, left, right, left... well,
Bobby had lost track of the turnings, and of everything else for that
matter.  Now and again he'd passed close to the sounds of heavy
traffic - feet, wheels, engines, loud humming things- but most of the
time he was separated from them by a bulkhead.  Or hull.  Whatever.
        Once he'd come out of the system entirely, overlooking a vast,
brightly lit space with a green floor, or so it appeared at that
distance.  From over a hundred feet up, he could see hundreds,
thousands of people, walking in and out of storefronts, walking,
lounging and playing on the field below.  Above him ran catwalks with
little kiosks like one could see in a mall running down the center.
Vehicles floated in and out of huge corridors, pushing slowly through
the people, many loaded with what were unmistakably cardboard boxes.
        Even at a hundred feet above the ground... floor... deck...
thingy... Bobby could pick out at least a dozen different races.  Just
like in that shantytown, only more prosperous, he thought.  A large
number - but not the majority, not quite - appeared human, although
some figures, like the huge blimp of a man moving effortlessly through
the thickest crowd, stretched the definition.  Others resembled
walking shag rugs, or nearly-burned pan pizzas, not to mention every
variation on the humanoid form Bobby could think of offhand.
        Unfortunately, he couldn't get -down- without causing a scene.
There was no ladder, no access port, no nothing that he could spot.  A
catwalk ran about thirty feet over his head, but it didn't seem any
more inviting.  He supposed he could get down with one of his
old-fashioned ice slides, but he wasn't sure, cosmopolitan though this
society obviously was, how much of a stir that would cause.  Finally
he gave it up, returning to the warren of vents and tunnels in hopes
of finding a less conspicuous way out.
        More rights, more lefts, more ups and downs.  The gray vents
were beginning to blur in Bobby's mind.  One light after another, some
working, some not, passed over his head.  One step after another
echoed around his ears, the monotonous sound broken only by the
occasional creaking panel or even less occasional sound of movement on
the other side of a wall.
        After about an hour of this, Bobby was ready to bag it all and
ask directions when he saw a loose vent panel punched halfway into the
passage.  A quick peek through the grate showed a broad, well-lit area
on the other side, with nobody in sight.  A quick blast of ice smashed
out the panel, and Bobby crawled through the gap into a room that, by
comparison, was brightly lit, clean, and apparently safe-looking.
        Unfortunately, appearances can be deceiving.
        "Good evening, Mr... Iceman, was it?" a voice called from the
back of the chamber.  From a small enclosed office area emerged a
young man, younger than Bobby - perhaps as young as Paige Guthrie, the
youngest X-Man these days.  Bobby wondered briefly what had become of
her and all the others when whatever had happened had happened, hoped
they were OK, and then returned his attention to the man who'd
addressed him.
	That individual wore what appeared, against all probability,
to be a snappy, form-tailored business suit, right down to the striped
tie and gleam-shined black patent oxfords.  His brown layer-cut hair
bounced with each step, and green eyes stared over a grim, cruel
smile.  Behind him walked the obligatory brace of bodyguards, tall,
square-jawed, neckless and dark.
        "You made quite an impression upon my subordinates,
Mr. Iceman," the young gentleman said.  "However, I have spent the
last two years rebuilding the presence my grandfather lost forty years
ago.  I'm afraid I cannot permit a vigilante to interfere with my
business at this critical stage of affairs."
        "Excuse me?" Bobby said.
        "Of course, after the remarkable demonstration of your
abilities you gave my subordinates," the young man said, "I will not
waste more of my valuable resources in futile attempts to eliminate - "
        "EXCUSE me... " Bobby said, icing up.  "Who -are- you anyway?"
        The young man blinked.  "You haven't heard of me?"
        "No."  Bobby folded his arms over each other.  "I'm new here,
or haven't you heard?"
        "I see," the young man nodded.  "I am Justinian Lynch,
grandson and heir of the late Roman Lynch."  When this failed to bring
any reaction, he said a bit more pointedly, "The -crime boss- Roman
Lynch."  After a moment, he lost his cool altogether.  "The legendary
INTERSTELLAR crime boss Roman Lynch!  Ruler in shadows of a hundred
filthy cities and owner of a thousand slave ships!  He died in
Tantalus four years ago!  Does -that- jog your memory?!?"
        "Afraid not... oh, wait," Bobby said, "those goons I beat up
mentioned a 'young Mister Lynch.'  That'd be you, wouldn't it?"
        "YES... I mean," Justinian said, restoring himself to calm,
self-assured superiority, "my associates do like to use that term of
endearment when speaking of me.  But anyway," he continued, gesturing
to the doorway, "now that you've been edified as to my identity and
ancestry, it's time for you to die."
        "I thought you said you weren't going to waste any more
resources on me."
        "-Valuable- resources," Justinian said, snapping his fingers.
Two more goons rolled in a woman in a straitjacket, head encased in a
black hood with small breathing vents.  "This young lady, although
promising at first, has proved impossible to control for any length of
time.  And yet I put off having her disposed of, hoping that I could
find some use for her talents."
	One of the goons attending the woman strapped to the handcart
drew a small folding case from his breast pocket, presenting it to
Justinian, who flipped it open to reveal a syringe.
        "Stimulant," Justinian said, taking the needle in his hands.
"Ms. Thermopeles spends most of her time under very heavy sedation."
With a careful hand Justinian punched the needle through the
straitjacket and injected its contents into the arm of the wearer.
Almost immediately the woman began to squirm and buck against the
restraints, and the attendants stepped away from the cart with
surprising alacrity.
        Justinian sighed, and with a gesture he dismissed his men to
flee the chamber.  "You'll forgive me if I make this introduction
brief," he said, gesturing to the smoke rising from the restraints.
With a roar the straps of the straitjacket burst into flames, and in
moments hands covered in orange fire scrabbled at the back of the hood
for the zipper.
        The face, revealed, rattled Bobby to the core.  A broad,
puckered scar ran down the left cheek from ear to chin.  Metal studs
poked through both eyebrows.  The matted black hair was cut into
clumps, hanging long here, showing bare scalp there.  Worst of all was
the large eyes, deep and the same light blue as Iceman's current
frozen physique... the eyes that seemed to stare at two things at
once, seeing things that weren't there for ordinary people to view.
        "Miss Phoebe Thermopeles," Justinian smirked, "please say
hello to Mr. Iceman."
        Thermopeles giggled, a shrill, edgy giggle that set off every
alarm in Bobby's head.  Arcade had a laugh like that; so had a lot of
other people Bobby had helped take down, usually with great pain and
danger to life and limb.
        "Mr. Iceman, I present you Miss Phoebe Thermopeles."  With
that Justinian stepped backwards towards the door.  "I hope you two
will get on swimmingly, but I have an alibi to establish, so..."
Three more steps brought Justinian to the door, and he opened it, his
smile vanishing, and his smooth voice turning hard and cold:
        "Thermopeles... KILL."
	The door slammed behind him.

  /*  Prodigy  "Firestarter (instrumental)"  _wip3'0ut" XL OST_  */

        Thermopeles raised a pair of flaming hands, giggling and
shaking head to toe, those eyes staring at the figure of solid ice
before her.
        Iceman struck first, and hard, blasting the woman with ice,
slamming her back against the back wall and encasing her in solid ice
of over two feet's thickness.  He poured it on, stopping only when he
was certain that any mutant flame power would be neutralized.  Only
Thermopeles' head remained clear; Bobby wasn't willing, just yet, to
kill, although hypothermia would probably do that in about five
minutes.
        Thermopeles giggled again, and suddenly Iceman was -aflame-.
He howled with agony as heat, primal, penetrating heat, ate away his
body.  The flame stopped, and he collapsed, curled up, shivering as
his power worked to restore him.  Against the wall, despite a serious
nosebleed, Thermopeles giggled and giggled, her hands glowing under
the rapidly cracking ice shell.
        Bobby just had time to see her burst free from the ice shell
before the flames returned again, stronger than ever...

	By the time anyone from the TARDIS located the fight, it had
moved down a corridor and into a large, dilapidated two-level room
which even Bobby, non-spacer that he was, would probably have
recognized as a shuttlebay if he hadn't been so busy trying not to get
killed.
	His problem was simple: Phoebe Thermopeles was so crazy that
she didn't feel pain, so even punching a lance of ice through her
fiery defenses and into her shoulder, as he had managed to do, didn't
register on her at all.  He, on the other hand, was quite sane, and so
every time she, say, melted off one of his hands, that hurt like a
sonofabitch.
	It was relatively easily -repaired-, thanks to the new level
he'd taken his powers to recently; but his endurance couldn't keep up
with that level of damage forever, and eventually he wouldn't be able
to restore himself anymore.  Conscious of this, he'd changed his
strategy, throwing up shields (which she almost instantly reduced to
vapor) and trying to get any sort of cover he could find.
	It kind of reminded him of fighting Pyro, the flamethrower-
wielding member of the Brotherhood of Mutants, except Pyro couldn't
-create- fire, only control it, which was why he wore the
flamethrower.  If you could get the flamethrower -away- from him, or
screw it up somehow, he'd be about as dangerous as any random guy off
the street.
	This chick was different.  She was a -true- pyrokinetic, and
either her gift or some outside factor had crushed her mind like an
empty beer can.  She was throwing flame around like there was no
tomorrow, without any sort of regard for conserving her strength.
Bobby figured his only hope at this point was to see if he could get
her to wear herself out - though she certainly didn't show any signs
of slowing down so far.
	Bobby risked a glance above his latest cover, which seemed to
be some kind of overturned cargo container.  Yep, she was still there,
still giggling inanely while fire crackled in her hair.  Spotting him,
she gathered light in her hand and prepared to throw it at him -
	- when a bolt of yellow-white fire, much brighter and denser
than the orange-red stuff she was chucking around, shot out of the
corridor behind her and struck her full in the back.
	Thermopeles had gotten quite accustomed to the idea that fire
couldn't hurt her; so when the lash of flame struck her and caused the
nerves of her back to light up, she screamed as though cut with a
sword, more out of surprise and shock than actual pain.
	The hell? thought Bobby as his opponent whirled to confront
this new threat.
	A small, bat-winged form swooped out of the corridor, circled
Thermopeles, and spat another gout of yellow-white fire at her.  Bobby
Drake came involuntarily to his feet, his icy jaw dropping.
	"LOCKHEED!" he cried.
	Thermopeles screamed in outrage and unleashed her most
powerful bolt yet, but the little purple dragon avoided it with almost
contemptuous ease, his aerial agility more than a match for his
deranged foe's aim.  The blast, powerful and coherent enough to hit
with physical force, whipped through the spot where the dragon had
been to slam into the far wall of the room, denting it soundly.
	From up above, on the balcony-like catwalk ringing the room's
second level, a familiar voice called a hail:
	"Bobby!  Looks like you can use some help!"
	Drake looked up - and saw a figure out of his past, the
trenchcoated shape of Don Griffin, waving at him.  Next to Don was 
a big blue shape Bobby didn't recognize.
        "Not necessary!" Iceman replied flippantly.  "I have
everything under contrAAAAAAAAGH!!"
	The last word blurred into a scream because Thermopeles had
successfully put Lockheed out of what passed for her mind momentarily,
then engulfed Bobby once again in flames.
	He staggered backward, his back banging against the overturned
remains of a shuttlecraft.  Dammit!  Didn't notice that was back
there! he thought to himself as he struggled to reconstitute himself
as fast as Thermopeles's flames were eating at him.
	A moment later, he felt a very peculiar sensation and fell
backward through the shuttlecraft hulk.  The flames didn't come with
him, and the resulting relief almost made him gasp out loud.
	He sprawled on the deck behind the hulk, then blinked up into
a familiar, smiling, masked face.
	"Kitty!" he blurted.
	"Hi, Bobby," said Shadowcat.  "I see your taste in girlfriends
hasn't improved."
	"That's not funny," Iceman grumped as he got to his feet and
brushed away the charred remains of his jacket.  "The hell are you
doing here?  I thought you were trapped forever in a parallel...
dimension," he added, his face going blank with comprehension as he
completed the sentence.
	Kitty touched her nose and grinned.  "Hold that thought.  So
who's your friend?"
	"Beats me," said Bobby.  "I'm not even sure who I pissed off
to get saddled with her."
	"Well, I guess we'd better go shut her down before she does
any more damage, not that this place would ever know the difference,"
said Shadowcat.  "You ready?"
	Iceman took a moment to gather up his concentration and freeze
himself down a little harder, putting the sharpest possible edges on
his faceted surface.
	"Let's do it," he said with a little smile.
	"That's a new look for you," Kitty observed conversationally
as they prepared to round the shuttle.
	"It's a long story," Bobby replied, and then they were around
the nose of the shuttle hulk and headed back into the thick of things.
	As they did so, and as Thermopeles turned to face them,
something made a very ominous creaking noise.
	Thermopeles let out another of those high-pitched, maddening
giggles, blasted the dented wall again, and then turned, ducked
another burst of counterfire from Lockheed, and sprinted down the
corridor she and Iceman had entered through.
	"Ah, let her go," Bobby said disgustedly as Kitty tensed to
give chase.  "Even -you- would never find her in the freakin' maze
that's on the other end of that hallway."
	Lockheed came to the same conclusion; with a last blast of
fire after the retreating form, he winged over and settled, a little
smugly, on Kitty's shoulder.
	"I guess you showed -her-," said Kitty indulgently, chucking
the dragon under the chin.
	"Hrzfrgnt," Lockheed replied, his body language clearly
translating the statement to, "Damn RIGHT."
	As Don and the blue guy climbed down from the upper level,
Bobby reverted to human form just before the Time Lord grabbed his
hand and threw an arm around him.
	"Bobby DRAKE," he said as they ran through their old Xavier's
School Secret Handshake.  "What's up, my MAIN. MAN.  My dawg.  My ace
in the hole!"
	"Don, it's great to see you," Drake replied, grinning.  "Some
of us thought you were dead."
	"And by 'some of us' you mean Scott," said Don wryly.
	"Yeah, well... "  Bobby shrugged, then turned to the blue
lion-looking guy.  "Hi, I don't think I know you.  I'm Bobby Drake,
Iceman."
	The lion-man looked offended.  "'I don't think I know you,'"
he said, in a voice Bobby recognized quite well, though it had
acquired a sort of growly, rumbly undertone since he last heard it.
"You stay up until midnight every night for a month to help a man pass
pre-calculus, and this is how well he remembers you."
	"Hank?  HANK?!  What the hell happened to you?  I mean, you
look -cool-, but - "
	The Beast smiled - at least, Bobby thought it was a smile -
and gave a rumbling chuckle.  "It's a long story," he said.  "I'll
tell you sometime.  In the mean time, are you all right?"
	"Sure, thanks to these two," said Drake, gesturing to Kitty,
who bowed with a little smile, and Lockheed, who kept looking smug.
	Bobby ruffled his short brown hair, let out a sigh, and added,
"I'm just glad she didn't manage to punch a hole in this wall.
Bulkhead.  Hull.  Thingy."
	The Beast rummaged in his top pocket, perched a pair of
pince-nez atop his muzzle, and and examined that feature of the room
carefully.
	"Actually, Robert," he said, a touch uncomfortably, "that is
not a wall, nor a bulkhead, nor a hull.  That is what we space and
time travelers commonly refer to as a -door-."
	The damaged door gave out another one of those ominous
creaking noises, much louder this time.
	Bobby blinked and looked at Don.
        "And that means... " he said in an I-don't-think-I-like-that
voice.
	Kitty glanced at Don, who grabbed her hand with one of his and
put his other hand on the Beast's shoulder.  Kitty seized Bobby's arm
with her free hand, and they all sank through the floor and into the
safety of the service duct beneath...
	... about two seconds before the docking bay was vented to
space by the total, catastrophic failure of its main bay door.

	Up on a better-repaired level, unaware that the rest of the
TARDIS crew had found what they were looking for, Jubilation Lee led a
slightly bewildered Paige Guthrie through the bazaar of the New
Orleans.
	Paige was slightly bewildered because, although she was a
well-traveled and open-minded young woman, she had never seen such a
teeming diversity of sentient life as this place.  Understandably, she
kept trying to stop and take it all in; but Jubilee was a girl on a
mission and she'd seen it before, and so she kept catching hold of
Paige's hand and half-dragging her along.
	"Come -on-, Hayseed," she grumbled impatiently as Paige paused
again, this time to blink in astonishment at a street performer - a
guy about the size of a horse who seemed to be juggling small anvils.
"'S'not polite to stare, anyway."
	"He's a -performer-," Paige replied as she let herself be
pulled along.  "His -job- is to be stared at."
	"Well, we got other things to do," said Jubilee, not to be
deterred.
	"Ain't we supposed to be looking for someone?"
	"Logan'll sniff us out if he needs us.  C'mon, c'mon, where is
it - there!" she said, her face lighting up.  With an extra surge of
energy, she half-hauled the unprotesting blonde through the fringe of
a crowd in front of a kiosk dealing in some kind of fried food
(judging by the smell), then pulled up in front of one of the proper
storefronts along the edge of the enormous room.
	DERU-VAL and SONS, the sign above the door read, TAILORS.
FINE, DURABLE CLOTHING for ANY SIZE or SHAPE.  ALTERATIONS.
	Jubilee took a small object resembling a high-tech stopwatch
out of her shorts pocket, clicked a button on it, read the resulting
display, and grinned.
	"OK, Guthrie," she said.  "Let's get you presentable."
	"I'm presentable now - " Paige protested, but she was herded
into the shop all the same.

	"Should we report that, uh, depressurized docking bay to
somebody?" asked Bobby Drake as he and the others found their way back
to the TARDIS's landing area.  "And what about what's-her-name and the
crimeboss kid?"
	"Already taken care of," Kitty told him.  "I just talked to de
Vries up in the New Orleans Field Office.  Bluesuiters down in Sector
447 bagged her trying to burn through a bulkhead into a residential
district."
	Bobby looked relieved, but puzzled.  "At least she won't be
barbecuing any random passers-by.  But I've been here the whole time,"
he said, "and you haven't talked to anybody."
	"Well, no," Kitty admitted, "'talked' isn't really the right
word, but for simplicity's sake, that's what we call it."  As they
walked, she pulled apart the junction of her jacket sleeve and glove
and showed him her Lens.
	"Whoa," said Bobby as he got his first glimpse of one of the
techno-mystic gems.  "That's - you're... "  He shook his head.  "What
-is- that?"
	"You'll understand in a bit," the Beast told him.  "In the
meantime - ah, here we are."
	They rounded the corner, and there was the TARDIS.  Logan was
leaning against it, arms folded, enjoying a cigar (which wouldn't burn
inside the vehicle).
	"I was about to tell you that Drake isn't in the inhabitable
levels and my sources say he's marked for death by an underlevel crime
boss," Logan said, "but I see you already know that."
	"Yeah, we pieced it together from context," said Kitty wryly.
"Where are the girls?"
	Logan shrugged.  "Probably still shoppin'.  Lee ditched me
about five minutes in, which is about right.  I'm figurin' on another
half-hour before I go lookin'."
	"Nice to see you too, Logan," said Bobby dryly.  "You know
some of these guys owe you image royalties?"
	Logan cracked a half-smile.  "Already tried," he said.  "Too
late, though.  Term entered common usage back in the 21st."
	Drake blinked.  "What year is it?" he asked.
	"2407," said Hank McCoy.  "We may as well go inside and wait,
and while we're waiting, there's something you should read."

	Bobby was only about halfway through Chapter 1 of "So You've
Just Arrived from a Parallel Universe" when the TARDIS doors opened
again.
	"Hey, Cold Miser," said Jubilee cheerfully.  "I see they found
you."
	"Hey, kid," said Bobby, putting the book aside so he could get
up and give her a hug.  "You're looking good."
	Jubilee smirked.  "I drink milk," she said.
	"That's... not what I meant, but OK," said Bobby, a little
rattled - it HAD been five very important years since he'd last seen
her.
	She snickered and said, "Anyway, nobody's gonna pay any
attention to me in a minute.  Ladies and gentlemen, mutants of all
ages, I give you the all-new, all-stylin' Paige Guthrie, with couture
assistance by yours truly!"
	So saying, Jubilee turned and gestured to the TARDIS doors
with a flourish.  For a moment, nothing happened.  Then, just as
Jubilee was starting to look a little annoyed and might have been
about to say something else, Paige came in, looking more self-
conscious than before.
	She was still wearing the vintage Kryptonian traffic cop's
uniform Jubilee had found in the TARDIS's wardrobe room, but it had
been... -abbreviated- was the best word Don could think of.  The
skirt, originally knee-length, had been shortened somewhat - which
would, admittedly, make it easier to move around in - and so had the
jacket, which had been shorn of its sleeves and cut neatly back to
leave her midriff bare.
	Over it, Paige wore a scarlet coat in a similar style, a
unique garment with the shoulders and overcape of a drover,
three-quarter-length heavy-cuffed sleeves, the waist-length notched
front of a cutaway and the slightly belled tail of a cassock.  It had
similar ribbed inserts in its sleeves and the same gold piping.
	Somewhere amidst the infinity of bits and bobs available in
the Bazaar, she and Jubilee had found some accessories to set this
ensemble off: low, soft boots that matched the skirt, a pair of
cuff-wristed gloves that matched the coat, and a jingly loop of golden
chain which hung from her belt.  Don noted with a smile that the belt
sported the familiar circle-X buckle design.  A person really -could-
find just about anything on the Bazaar.
	"Well," said Don with a grin, "you certainly look less like a
500-year-old Kryptonian traffic cop."
	"Yeah, that's good," Kitty agreed.  "A little daring, but
still classy."
	"You think so?" Paige wondered, smoothing the front of the
modified uniform top.  "I'm not sure.  Jubilee talked me into it."
	"Paige, Paige, Paige," said Jubilee with an air of exaggerated
patience.  "You're all grown up now, girl."  Smacking the back of her
hand lightly against her friend's taut stomach (which was indeed, Don
thought, worthy of display - damn, the last time I saw Paige, she was
just starting to come out of that Guthrie Gawky Phase), she added in a
gentle parody of Paige's soft West Virginia drawl, "It's time to
-flaunt- what God gave you."
	"Well... maybe," Paige said, a little dubious yet.  She held
out a hand and smoothed the sleeve of her red coat.  "I do love the
coat, though."
	Don shared a look with Kitty - they grow up so fast - and then
bent to the scanner eyepiece again.
	A few minutes later, he announced the next fix, and the TARDIS
left the New Orleans Bazaar behind.

			   UNKNOWN LOCATION
		       11:07 PM NEW AVALON TIME

        Everything seemed so foggy, so unreal... and so painful.
        Jean Grey couldn't remember the last time she'd hurt so... no,
she could, she could see it around her, the burning cockpit of the
orbital shuttle.  She could feel the grip of the flight yoke under her
fingers, her burning fingers... she could feel the radiation pouring
through that unshielded cockpit through her body.
        For the moment, her telekinetic powers shielded her from the
worst of the cosmic rays.  TK couldn't stop it all, though, and enough
poured through to sap her strength, make her dizzy and sleepy... so
sleepy...
        Jean shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts.  She had to
get the shuttle into atmosphere.  The others depended on her.  None
of them could withstand this level of radiation for thirty minutes,
those thirty critical minutes needed to enter the safe insulating
blanket of air surrounding the Earth.
        Neither could Jean Grey.
        Through the fog of her mind she realized that she had done
this before, that this was a dream-memory of some kind... that any
moment, the semi-intelligent natural force known as the Phoenix would
appear to her, offer to join itself to her...
        ... but it wasn't there.  Jean could feel the hole, the loss
of something she'd barely paid any mind to.  She'd been cut off from
the Phoenix.  It was not here.
        But it had to be here!  The Phoenix was a universal force of
destruction and rebirth!  It had to be there somewhere!  If she could
only reach - off there, somewhere, she thought she could see it -
        Something bit into the flesh of her left arm, and the pain
spiralled away.  For a moment Jean's dreaming mind struggled to hold
the dream together, only to yield in relief as both pain and dream
ended.

        "Okay, she's back under again.  Did you get anything?"
        "Not a thing.  Like probing tritanium."
        "Well, I think any further probes should be postponed until we
finish stabilizing her.  She's still a little hypothermic from her
snow bath."
        "Not a chance.  Zurich is sending an expert over to take over.
They're really anxious about this."
        "In this weather?  They must not like this expert!"
        "Listen, this person is obviously a powerful and trained
telepath if her shields hold up under continuous probes while
unconscious.  She appears out of nowhere within the perimeter of
Earth's most secure Psi Corps detention facility wearing combat gear.
Headquarters want to know everything about her, and they want it
yesterday."
        "All right, all right, so we keep probing her.  But -you- are
going to go take a rest.  Doctor's orders."
        "This is -my- prison, doctor, and - "
        "And you're risking backlash if you keep pushing yourself.
The Corps doesn't want its children burning out their talents."
        "The Corps is mother, the Corps is father."
        "You betcha.  Now go get some chicken soup, sit down, get a
blanket over you... I hear there's a fine show on the holovid
tonight."
        "All right, all right, I'm going.  I'll send in Fulke in a bit
to continue the probes.  Keep it up until the man from Zurich
arrives."
        "Whenever that is.  I hope he enjoys our fine summer weather."

			SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
			 8:21 PM PACIFIC TIME

	Charles Xavier sat by the far back-corner booth in a dimly
lit spaceport restaurant called the Flightline Cafe, keeping an eye on
the place's thin crowd.  Out in the corridor, he could sense the
streams of people moving back and forth, their motivations and
feelings blurring as crowds always did.  He was "listening", but
passively, rather than actively.  He didn't know what it took to
attract the attention of the local flavor of telepath, and he wasn't
eager to find out.
	Erik Lehnsherr was standing more toward the front of the
restaurant, next to the brass-railed bar.  He was talking to a pretty
young woman in a grubby grey coverall, a toolbelt, and tanker boots,
her long, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail which revealed that her
ears came to delicate points.  Xavier wondered whether this, and the
dark stripe crossing her cheek and ending in a point near the corner
of her mouth, were cosmetic modifications or natural features.  In
this world, one could never be sure.
	She and Erik talked for a few minutes more; then she nodded,
got down from her barstool, slapped some change on the bar, and left
the Flightline Cafe with a smooth, loose-jointed, confident walk.
	Magneto watched her go, then walked back to the corner booth,
gathered his cape over his arm, and sat.
	"That young lady," he informed Xavier, "is the first mate of a
starship which might be able to get us out of here.  She's gone to get
the captain, who happens to be her brother."
	"How do you intend to persuade him to take us anywhere with no
money?" Xavier inquired calmly.  He knew Lehnsherr well enough to know
that the man certainly had such a plan, and he was curious to know
what it was.
	"Well, Charles," said Lehnsherr with a dry little smile, "I
think I can pull together enough of an advance to get us started.
When we get to the other end, why... I suppose I shall have to sell
you."
	Xavier blinked, taken momentarily aback, and was just starting
to feel a bit indignant when he saw the twinkle in his old friend's
steel-blue eyes and realized what the joke was.  He was banking on the
International Police being interested enough in Xavier's abilities,
and possibly his own, to stake them for the rest of their passage.
	"Suppose," Xavier asked softly, "the International Police
turns out to be just as bad as what we're leaving?"
	"I doubt they are.  The local press wouldn't be so
vituperative toward them if they were anything but a diametrically
opposed faction.  At any rate, it's a risk, but a calculated one.  Our
position will be no worse."
	"Except that we'll be aboard a space station rather than on an
inhabitable planet."
	"We may be able to turn that to our advantage if the
circumstances require it," said Magneto with another small smile.
	Xavier considered that, then nodded.  "All right, we'll try
it.  We have little enough to lose, at this point."
	A moment later, the woman reappeared, accompanied by a
slightly taller man with short hair the same color as hers and a
strikingly similar face, right down to the stripe.  He could be
nothing other than her brother, possibly her twin, and he walked with
the same slightly lazy grace.
	Coupled with the pistol holstered low on his hip and his
relaxed clothes - white shirt, black trousers, black vest - his
demeanor gave him the look of a gambler or a gunfighter.  The truth
was, he was both, in the grand tradition of his galactically famous
father.
	"Evening, gentlemen," he said in a soft voice backed by
considerable strength.  He slid into the booth across from them,
making room for his sister.  "I'm Jason Solo.  Jane tells me you have
a business proposition for us."
	"We need to get to Babylon 6," said Magneto flatly.
"Unscrutinized."
	Solo considered this, then grunted.  "Running blips is a
dangerous business these days," he said.  "We're not opposed to
bucking the system, you understand, but danger costs extra."
	Xavier sat, hands folded in front of him, and let Lehnsherr do
the talking.
	"I can give you two thousand Salusian credits now," he said,
"with twenty thousand more when we get to Babylon 6."
	"Awfully thin advance margin," said Jane; Xavier noticed that
her voice was mellower than her brother's, though her gaze was even
more appraising.  "Who's backing you up on the other end?"
	Without turning a hair, as if he'd known the man all his life
and had the promise straight from his lips, Magneto looked calmly back
at her and said, "Chief Hutchins of the International Police."
	Jane glanced thoughtfully at her brother.
	"Well, his credit's good," said Jason.  "Is he expecting you?"
	"No," Magneto replied honestly, "but he'll be very glad to see
us, I assure you."
	It was at about that moment that it struck Xavier - Erik was
bargaining with these people, and being straight with them in the
process, rather than simply saying, "I am Magneto.  You will take me
to Babylon 6 or you will very much regret it."
	He could follow his old friend's chain of logic without a
problem, too.  With his sublime self-assurance, Magneto was banking
heavily on the following assumptions:
	- Don Griffin was here.
	- Don would have sought out his local counterpart and compared
notes.
	- He could not possibly have neglected to mention such
significant figures in his home reality as Magneto and Professor X.
	- His counterpart, given his position in the universe, would
gladly pay 20,000 credits to have the two of them in his hands rather
than Earth's.
	Xavier only hoped that a) he was right; and b) Don's local
counterpart was the same sort of man Don was.  That kind of thing was
not always the case, Xavier knew.  He had read about Don's fiercest
battle, just before his first disappearance and presumed death.
	In that battle, the armored X-Man had tangled with an
alternate-universe version of himself who happened to be a fanatical
Nazi.  Given the "real" Don's feelings for Kitty Pryde, who was
Jewish, it had come as no surprise to Xavier to learn that their
battle had been a spectacular, brutal, no-holds-barred affair, a grim
and violent duel to the death.
	Here's hoping, thought Xavier as he sat silently and watched
Erik bargain for their passage, Don's local equivalent really is
equivalent, and not a man like that.

			   PALACE-IMPERIAL
			   SAENAR, SALUSIA
		  5:30 PM (11:30 PM NEW AVALON TIME)

	The TARDIS materialized outside the Palace-Imperial's outer
courtyard wall, on the sidewalk near the public transit station.  As
Kitty and Don disembarked, Don noticed with a smile that the decal on
the front had changed to the Cheltarese version of the Pepsi-Cola
logo.
	Finding Rahne Sinclair was not difficult.  Once they were out
of the TARDIS, all the two X-Men had to do was listen.  They hadn't
often heard Rahne sing - normally she was too shy - but who else was
going to be singing a Scottish song on the grounds of the Salusian
Palace-Imperial?

"Whare hae ye been sae braw, my lad?
Whare hae ye been sae brankie, O?
Whare hae ye been sae braw, my lad?
Cam ye by Killiecrankie, O?

An ye hae been whare I hae been
Ye wad na been sae canty, O;
An ye hae seen what I hae seen
On th'braes o'Killiecrankie, O!"

	They went to the outer palace gates; Kitty's Lens got them
past the guards without a problem.  They followed the singing - quite
nicely done, actually - up a bricked path, then over a grassy rise.

"I faught at land, I faught at sea;
At hame I faught my auntie, O;
But I met the Devil and Dundee
On th'braes o'Killiecrankie, O!

An ye hae been whare I hae been
Ye wad na been sae canty, O;
An ye hae seen what I hae seen
On th'braes o'Killiecrankie, O!"

	Topping the rise, they found Rahne, all right - half-sitting,
half-lying on the ground in a grassy, tree-shaded glade in her
transitional form.  She was stretched out full length and propped up
on her elbows, singing Robbie Burns to a rapt-looking group of five
off-duty Salusian Guards in their workout clothes.  Rahne herself was
wearing a rather-worse-for-wear X-Men battle uniform under a Guards
semi-dress jacket which was somewhat too big for her.
	The whole tableau was so odd, and yet so amusing, that they
didn't have the heart to break it up.  Instead, they paused at the
edge of the glade, not intruding, to listen to the rest of the song.

"Th' bauld Pitcur fell in a furr,
An' Clavers got a clankie, O;
Or I had fed an Athole gled,
On th'braes o'Killiecrankie, O!

An ye hae been whare I hae been
Ye wad na been sae canty, O;
An ye hae seen what I hae seen
On th'braes o'Killiecrankie, O!"

	Rahne finished the song, feeling a pleasant glow of
comradeship for these fine young folk who had made her adjustment to
this strange new world painless with their easy good fellowship.  She
opened her eyes to take in their reactions, and as she did she noticed
two more figures standing between two of the trees on the path side of
the glade.
	For a half-second, she was worried, but then she saw that
their body language was completely non-aggressive.  There were two of
them, a man and a woman; they were standing very close together, hand
in hand in fact, and they were both smiling at her.
	At about the time she registered that, she realized that they
were human, not Salusian; and a half-second after that, she realized
that she knew them.
	"Kitty!" she blurted, jumping to her feet.  "An' Don!"
	Without realizing it, she reverted to her normal human form as
she jumped up, a thing which took her new Salusian friends a bit by
surprise.  Rahne didn't notice as she darted past the slightly
bewildered Guards to grab her old friends up in an embrace.
	"Rahne, are you OK?" asked Don when he could breathe again.
	"Ne'er better," Rahne replied positively.  "An' I see yui're
nae dead either."
	"So far, so good," said Kitty with a grin.

	Half an hour later, the eight of them, along with a very
harried-looking Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration official,
were jammed into a small office on the fourth floor of the palace,
sorting through the voluminous paperwork that comes with being a
dimensionally displaced person on Salusia.
	Don leaned against the wall in the corner, arms folded,
watching Rahne grapple with the paperwork.  Like Paige, she had
changed a lot in the five years or so since he last saw her.
	Then, she'd been sixteen and still rather scrawny, a late
bloomer whose lack of fashion sense and chronic self-image problems
didn't help.  She'd still been cutting her thick red hair in that
Annie Lennox crew cut, which didn't do anything for her.  Rachel
Summers could get away with that hairstyle, she had the brass in her
attitude to back it up; but on Rahne it just looked... repressed.
	Apparently she'd loosened up a little bit in the five years
since then; her bright red hair, too thick and wiry to wear very long,
had grown out into a slightly disordered pageboy, low-maintenance and
casual.  She'd certainly shot up and filled out, too.  Even in her
human shape, which was considerably more lightly built than her
wolf-girl form, she did nice things to that beat-up X-Men battle suit.
	On the other side of her, Kitty Griffin noticed the thoughtful
look on her husband's face, followed his entire train of thought, and
gave him a mischievous little grin.  Don chuckled, reserving a
good-natured groan for his inside voice.  That look told him,
essentially, that he was busted and would pay for it later.  He
returned his attention to more important matters.
	"Rahne," he said helpfully, "there's no 'o' in 'adventurer.'"
	"Och," said Rahne, waving a hand.  "Next ye'll be tellin' me
how tae spell 'pseudo-lycanthropoid'."
	Kitty mused thoughtfully for a second, leaned toward Rahne,
sniffed the air around her tentatively, and then presented her
findings:
	"...you're drunk!"
	"Nae!" Rahne said, offended.  "A trifle tipsy, p'raps," she
allowed after a moment's thought, "but nae drunk."
	"What have you been drinking?" asked Don in a tone of mild
curiosity.
	"Nae but small beer, really.  That nice lad Kerit and his
friends had some durin' their game."  
	Don turned a questioning look to Kerit, who shrugged and said,
"APA."
	"Asrial's Finest Pale Ale?" asked Don; the Guardsman nodded.
	"Good grief," said Kitty.  "That stuff hits humans harder than
Lagavulin!"
	"We didn't know she was human!" Nellis Ells protested.
	"I'm -fine-," Rahne insisted.  "A creature like me has a
consid'rable tolerance f'r alcohol, ye knoow.  B'sides, I oonly had
three."
	At about that time, Jubilation Lee elbowed her way into the
office, her face lit up with delight.
	"Well, if it ain't Rahne Sinclair!" she said, getting a hug.
"What've they got you doing - oh, man, these forms are a bitch, aren't
they?  Oh, ugh, -and- you have the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ones to
deal with!  -Maximum- suction.  Hold on, lemme call somebody who can
help cut through the red tape."
	Turning to the immigration official, she gestured imperiously
and said, "Gimme a phone, yo."
	The official blinked at her, then handed her his desk phone.
Jubilee, the tip of her tongue wedged into the corner of her mouth,
dialed a long number from heart, then said, "... Gryph?  Jubilation
Lee here.  Listen, one of our DPs washed up on Salusia, she's had
three APAs and she's not the best speller when she's sober if you
catch my drift... "

	Twenty minutes later, they were on their way - but not before
Rahne promised to come back as soon as she could and visit Kerit and
his squad.

			SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
			 9:15 PM PACIFIC TIME

	Jason Solo's father, the late, great Han Solo, had taught him
everything he knew a